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Book. — ^ 

GopightN°_ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSrr. 



R.16I £ 03Q 



FOUR - SQUARE 



OR 



THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 



ADDRESSES TO YOUNG MEN, BY 

JOSEPH RICKABY, S.J. 



'That tower of strength 

That stood four-square to all the winds that blew. ' 

— Tennyson. 



JOSEPH F. WAGNER 

NEW YORK 
1908 



LIBRARY ol CONGRESS] 
Two Cosies Received 

DEC 3 19G8 

CUSS flL XXc, No. I 



y^ 



Cum ^ermis^u S>upertorum 



^ifjtl <&b*tat 



REMIGIUS LAFORT, S. T. L. 

Censor Librorum 



imprimatur 



*JOHN M. FARLEY, D. D. 

Archbishop of New Vork 



New York, September 8, 1908 



89* 



*9 



Copyright, 1908, by JOSEPH F. WAGNER, New York 



PREFACE 

These Addresses have appeared in the 
Homiletic Monthly. They are written 
rather with an eye to scientific accuracy 
than to unction, eloquence and rhetoric: 
for surely conduct is a matter of science. 





CONTENTS 










PAGE 


I. 


Virtue in General 




M • [•! I 


I 


II. 


The Cardinal Virtues . 




» ;•! • i 


• 9 


III. 


Prudence 




►■ -«i • -< 


. 16 


IV. 


Temperance . 




» »i ;• ;< 


. 23 


V. 


Human Acts 




i :•! :•< < 


. 30 


VI. 


Of Fortitude 




► • .•; :« 


- . 38 


VIII. 


Of Justice . 




W • •! M 


. 46 


VII. 


Justice and Charity 




» • • 4 


. 54 


IX. 


The Virtue of Religion 




» •' • < 


. 62 


X. 


Truthfulness, Gratitude, 


Obedience . 


. 69 


XI. 


Magnanimity and Humility 


. 77 


XII. 


The Infused Virtues . 




i .••• • A 


, ,. 86 



THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

A Course of Addresses to Young Men 



I. VIRTUE IN GENERAL 

There are infused virtues and acquired virtues. These addresses 
deal with the latter, with the acquired virtues. Of infused virtues 
we shall have something to say at the end. A virtue is a habit of 
doing right ; a habit of doing wrong is called a vice. A habit is a 
made thing, made by the free human acts of the individual. It 
results of acts whereof he is master, to do or not to do, and he 
chooses to do them. No one is born with habits. A young child 
consequently has neither vices nor virtues. But it has propensities 
both virtuous and vicious. These propensities are partly common to 
all men, partly peculiar to individuals, depending in the latter case 
on the bodily nature inherited from parents and ancestors ac- 
cording to what is called the law of heredity. Habits and acts 
answer to one another; but a person may do an act, good or evil, 
without having yet formed the corresponding habit, be it of virtue 
or vice. Clearly, a man may get drunk without being an habitual 
drunkard, or give an alms before he has mastered the virtue of 
liberality. Otherwise no virtue could ever be acquired; for the 
act must precede the habit, and the habit of virtue, or of vice, is 
the gradual result of a series of virtuous, or vicious, acts. But, 
done without habit, an act is done fitfully, irregularly, with difficulty 
and uncertainty and much imperfection. 



2 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

The best way to understand a habit, and thereby to understand 
what a virtue is, is to consider what we understand by skill. Skill 
is a habit of proficiency in some art. Skill comes by practice. We 
are not born skilful, we are born clumsy creatures ; but this native 
clumsiness adheres to some natures more than to others. We 
are born with predispositions w r hich may be turned into skill by 
practice. Practice presupposes power ; you can not practise running 
unless nature has gifted you with the use of your legs. Skill, there- 
fore, and virtue, and every habit, presupposes power. Habit is the 
determinant of power, not the maker of it. The skill of a trained 
singer is a habit. The voice is there from the first; the most ac- 
complished vocalist was once a squalling baby ; if the baby had had no 
lungs and vocal chords to squall with, never could the singer's 
voice have been trained to melody. Every habit is in some power, 
and perfects that power to act equally, surely, readily, to good effect. 
A strong man, seizing a billiard cue for the first time, may make 
a cannon and pocket the balls ; but he will not do that again. Only 
a practised and skilful player ever makes a break at billiards. The 
unskilful player, till his skill begins to come, makes only occasional 
flukes. Nor will a man who has not acquired the virtue of meek- 
ness succeed in keeping his temper, when provoked at all hours 
from Monday to Saturday. His is not the skill so to command 
himself. That skill is the virtue, which he has not yet got. 

The sum of a person's habits is called his character. Education 
is the foundation of character. Education is chiefly of the young, 
because young natures are in all things more plastic. Older people 
are "set," as in bone and muscle, so likewise in habits. Neverthe- 
less, habits go on growing, to a greater or less degree, throughout 
life; thus education itself becomes a lifelong process. Whatever 
we do consciously and willingly, we are apt to do it again; that 



VIRTUE IN GENERAL 3 

aptitude goes to build up habit. And not only what we do, but 
what we wilfully omit to do, when there is occasion for doing 
it, goes to make habit also — a habit, that is to say, of omitting. 
The immediate author of all a person's habits is the person himself, 
for habits come of personal acts, of which he is the doer. Every 
man thus makes his own character, — we must add, out of pre- 
existent materials, which he did not make, and under the influence 
of a surrounding atmosphere of circumstances, which he has not 
created. Still, though influenced and conditioned, he is not abso- 
lutely controlled by present circumstance and pre-existent fact; he 
acts for himself, and his acts make him the manner of man that he 
becomes. Hence it is possible, indeed, it not uncommonly hap- 
pens, for a youth to be educated in one way by his parents and 
guardians, and meanwhile to be educating himself in a diametric- 
ally opposite direction. His masters put him to study; if he did 
study, he would grow studious and, possibly, learned; as it is, 
he "cuts" his lessons day by day, and is forming to himself the 
character, one degree worse than that of an ignoramus, the char- 
acter of a misologus, hater of books and learning. Or worse still, 
he has to be much in chapel, for so his companions are; he hears 
many prayers recited, he not unfrequently goes to the Sacraments 
as those about him do ; but because he inwardly repines at all these 
things, and has little or no heart in him, the virtue called religion, 
whereby we worship God, is not being formed in him at all, but 
rather the contrary vice of impiety; and so he will prove himself, 
when he goes out his own master, impious and irreligious, for 
thereunto is he self-educated. 

Once acquired, a habit is not necessarily kept. An inanimate 
thing may be kept indefinitely, but a habit, particularly a good habit, 
requires the food and exercise of frequent acts, as occasion arises ; 



4 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

if such occasions are missed, and the acts called for are not elicited, 
the habit droops and goes near to dying. A habit enables us to 
do a thing easily. At the same time it would appear that acts which 
we have learnt to perform very easily go very little, if any, way to- 
ward strengthening the habit. A swimmer who could almost swim 
the Channel is not much improved by taking a few quiet strokes in a 
bath. Nor does a very meek man grow particularly in meekness by 
enduring the shrill cry of the newsboy in the street. A habit grows, 
on ground wherever it is not yet perfectly formed, by our doing 
that which we have, not yet got thoroughly into the way of doing. 
Virtue is strengthened only by being exercised under trying circum- 
stances. Virtue grows strong in conflict, and is enfeebled by ease. 
No one needs to be told that bad habits are easier to form than 
good ones. A bad habit comes of a succession of bad acts ; and to 
do a bad act, commonly, we have not to exert ourselves, but simply 
to let ourselves go. It is so easy to be wicked that one wonders how 
anyone could ever be vain of it ; yet some people are. A bad habit 
is otherwise called a vice. A bad act is a sin. The sin passes, 
though its guilt (or liability before God) does not pass; the vice 
remains. Nay, when the sin, that is, the guilt of the sin, is taken 
away by penance, the vice, or evil habit, is not taken away. The 
vice does not put us out of grace or favor with God ; only sin does 
that. Nevertheless the vice comes of sin, done in the past; and 
predisposes us to sin in the future. A pardoned sinner, one who 
has made a good confession, if he has committed the same sin many 
times over, must expect a hard struggle with the vice, or evil habit, 
thence resultant, still remaining in his soul. Often he will sin again 
and again in consequence. The only thing for him is to repent again 
and again, and to repent promptly. Repentance gradually will de- 
stroy not only the sin but also the vice. Not only will he be par- 



VIRTUE IN GENERAL 5 

cloned the repeated acts, but the habit will be cured. One of the com- 
monest temptations of the young and inexperienced is the thought : 
"There's no use trying, I can not be good !" But you must be good, 
or you will lose your soul. You must swim out of this abyss of 
evil, or you will be drowned there and die for ever. And with 
God's grace, and your own good will, and God's Sacraments, you 
can swim out of it. 

Strictly speaking, it is not the same thing to do a good act and 
to do an act of virtue. To do an act of virtue, I must have the 
virtue in my soul; but virtues (we are speaking now of the "ac- 
quired virtues") are not in the soul to start with; we start with 
doing good acts laboriously, fitfully, with effort and attention that 
does not always succeed, as we learn to play a game ; gradually the 
good habit is formed, the virtue, or skill in doing good, is acquired ; 
and thenceforth good acts are elicited with fair ease and regularity, — 
acts which are at once good acts and acts of virtue, this or that 
virtue according to the nature of the act. 

An act of virtue is always done on principle, from a proper 
motive, not on blind, unreasoning impulse, not under mere stress 
of passion, — very often, indeed, in the very teeth of an impulse of 
passion. Still, when it can be got to work in the right direction, 
passion lends force to virtue ana is a valuable adjunct to virtuous 
action. It is the office of the selective eye of reason to set passion 
to work in the right direction. The passions are something like the 
elephants that used to be employed in the ancient battles. Often 
in rage and terror those beasts would break from all control, and 
trample upon the men who had brought them into the field ; at other 
times they did good service against the enemy, mostly, I imagine, by 
frightening people who knew no better, as the Romans were fright- 
ened at first sight of what they called the "Lucanian ox." It is very 



6 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

well to act under passion, if you are sure you are going the right 
way and are not going too far. 

From all that has been said it will appear that it is not enough 
for man to have powers; he must further acquire habits, residing 
in and perfecting his several powers, else he will use his powers to 
no good effect. Some powers, indeed, in man, do not need perfecting 
by habit; these are the organic and animal powers, such as cir- 
culation, respiration, digestion; these powers need no education. 
But all the five senses fall under the discipline of habit, as taste in a 
cook, hearing in a musician, touch in a pianist or a surgeon. It 
is not enough for a gymnast to be strong, he must acquire muscular 
habits of skill by dint of practice. Even walking is a habit, an ac- 
quired thing. Articulate speech is a habit founded upon that power 
which in a baby comes out in squalling. A baby that could not 
squall could never speak. There are habits in the intellect, habits 
of knowledge, got by study. These habits of intellect, sense, and 
muscle, make for the physical perfection of a man, not for his 
moral perfection. In other words, they perfect him toward certain 
particular ends, not toward the last end and final reason for 
human existence. In front of that final end these habits may be 
misdirected and abused, and are daily and continually abused. We 
see knowledge, skill, art and science put to the vilest uses. These 
habits, therefore, are not commonly called virtues. Virtue, as St. 
Augustine says (De lib. arbit. I, c. 18, n. 50) is "something that 
none can put to ill purpose." Put it to ill purposes, and it ceases to 
be virtue; thus what would be an act of liberality is not an act 
of that virtue if it be done, not for the proper motive of the vir- 
tue, but out of sheer ostentation. You may abuse any other habit or 
skill, you can not abuse a virtue. 

Mere knowledge and intellectual appreciation of the right thing to 



VIRTUE IN GENERAL 7 

do is not virtue. Thus they were foolish philosophers who defined 
fortitude, "an understanding of the things that are to be feared 
and the things that are not to be feared." A virtue is a guarantee 
for the performance of the act corresponding, when occasion arises. 
But such knowledge is scarce any guarantee at all. The hour of 
danger paralyzes the knowledge in the man who has never been 
exercised in the act to face danger. He knows that it is foolish, even 
shameful, to get into a fright and fly; yet away he runs and all 
his philosophy with him. Virtue, indeed, supposes knowledge; it 
is not mere routine behavior, mere knack and rule of thumb: it is 
a habit acquired by practice of acting up to one's knowledge. Vir- 
tue in this resembles other habits. Skill, too, is something more 
than knowledge. For example, there are certain rubrics to be ob- 
served by a priest at Mass. They are comprised in quite a few 
pages ; you might know the little book by heart, but you would blun- 
der dreadfully if you had never practised. Nor could one ever 
operate as a surgeon who had simply read books on surgery. So 
for virtue you must understand and appreciate and keep well in 
your mind's eye the motives for virtuous conduct ; but further you 
must put your hand to the work ; try, and fail ; blunder, and begin 
again; do the virtuous thing in a lame and imperfect way, with 
effort and difficulty, overcoming yourself to do it. In time the act 
will grow easy, the habit will have been acquired. 

A virtue acquired is a guarantee of the corresponding act of 
virtue being forthcoming when called for. Not, however, an ab- 
solutely unfailing guarantee. The meekest of men has his meek- 
ness ruffled by sudden gusts of unreasonable anger. The pru- 
dence of the most prudent deserts him at times ; he is taken off his 
guard, and behaves not altogether wisely. Stoics and other ancient 
philosophers expected too much of human virtue, thinking that it 



8 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

should never fail to act. The mere fact of man having an animal 
body, liable to perturbations from within and without, is enough 
to threaten always and sometimes to upset, the perfect equilibrium 
of his virtue. For this and other reasons, as we shall see later, 
natural virtue needs to be eked out by the grace of God. 



THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 



II. THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 



We speak of a "cardinal of the Holy Roman Church" and of the 
"principal of the college. ,, Both words have originally the same 
meaning. Cardinal is from cardo, a hinge. The college may be 
said to hinge upon its principal ; and again a cardinal was originally 
and is to this day the principal priest of some parish-church in 
Rome. The cardinal virtues, then, are the principal virtues — and 
that in two ways. Either they are taken as the main virtues, to 
which all other virtues approximate and can be ultimately reduced, 
or they are taken for the chief component elements of every virtue 
whatsoever. In the latter sense they are spoken of as integral 
parts of virtue, their union going to make up virtue in its entirety. 
We will consider them in this latter sense first. 

We owe the enumeration of the cardinal virtues, not to the He- 
brew Scriptures, but to the Greek philosophers. Prudence, tem- 
perance, fortitude, justice, were already enumerated at Athens as 
far back as B. C. 400. The root idea of justice is the rendering to 
every man of his own. But what is a man's own? That may be 
said to be determined by law. Let every man have what the law 
allows him. Justice, therefore, is conformity to law. But the law 
may be said to prescribe all virtues. The saying is debatable, but 
it is not worth while debating it here. Every virtue, therefore, is 
conformable to law, and in practising any virtue a man is observ- 
ing the law, and is, therefore, just. Hence in Scripture the "just" 
or "righteous" man is the law-abiding man; the virtuous man 
simply the "good man," in contrast with the sinner, who is a law- 
breaker. Again, virtue moves a man to do good steadily, regularly 
and constantly, even in face of difficulties. But constancy under 



io THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

difficulties belongs to fortitude. There is, therefore, an element of 
fortitude in every virtue, by the mere fact of virtue being a habit. 
Once more, every virtue is a habit of doing things in moderation, 
holding on to the golden mean, neither overdoing the thing nor 
underdoing it, but doing exactly what is fit and proper under the 
circumstances. Such is the great Aristotelian doctrine, that all 
virtue lies in a mean between two vicious extremes. Liberality, for 
instance, observes the mean between prodigality and stinginess; 
fortitude between rashness and cowardice; humility between 
haughtiness and meanness of spirit. But moderation is the equiva- 
lent of temperance, which is thus shown to be an essential element 
in every virtue. It is not easy to discern the golden mean, e. g., in 
government between remissness and over-indulgence, when to 
punish and when to condone, when to forbid and when to allow. 
Such discernment is the part of prudence. Prudence is the eye of 
every virtue. No virtue goes blind. Thus, to be virtuous in any 
department is to be at once prudent, just, courageous and temperate. 
More usually, however, the four cardinal virtues are taken as 
four distinct virtues and main heads of virtue, under which the 
other virtues are severally enumerated. Under * prudence, come 
prudence in one's own affairs and prudence in the affairs of others 
whom one has to govern. Justice includes justice distributive (of 
rewards), vindictive (punishing), and commutative (enforcing con- 
tracts) ; it is further taken to include the virtues of religion, obedi- 
ence, truthfulness, liberality and gratitude. Underl fortitude come 
magnanimity, patience and perseverance. I Temperance 1 includes 
abstinence (in food), sobriety (in drink), chastity, also modesty, 
humility, meekness, clemency. The theological virtues are distinct 
from the cardinal, and are not considered here, as being not "ac- 
quired" but "infused." 



THE CARDINAL VIRTUES n 

Every habit, as we have seen, resides in some faculty or power. 
The habit does not make the power, any more than the school- 
master makes the child. It presupposes it as a thing given; then 
taking it in hand it disciplines and trains it and teaches it to act to 
good purpose; whereas, away from the good habit engendered in 
it by training, the power would have acted fitfully and at random. 
Virtue being a habit, it is possible to assign for every virtue the power 
in which it resides and which it perfects. We shall find the four car- 
dinal virtues residing in the powers of the human soul. All these 
several powers want virtues to train them and guide them to orderly 
behaviour. 

You sometimes hear people, who know no better, saying that 
all virtue is in the will. That is a mistake. Virtue is the disci- 
pline of the soul. It is not enough for the will alone to be disci- 
plined, the subordinates must be disciplined as well as the chief, 
else you have no ready and regular action. Not only must the 
rider be skilled in horsemanship, but the horse also must be broken 
in. Virtue, therefore, resides even in appetite. It is put there 
(under God) by reason, and consists in the appetite's being habitu- 
ally broken in to the obedience of reason. That habitual state is 
the result of many acts of conflict, in which reason has subdued 
appetite, as a trainer subdues a wild young horse. Plato expresses 
it in these terms: "The driver (reason), laying himself back, tugs 
with all his might at bit and bridle in the teeth of the wanton horse, 
embruing in blood his foul-mouthed tongue and jaws, forcing him 
back on his haunches till his legs and hindquarters almost touch 
the ground, and putting him to pain." Plato thought, and thought 
rightly, that the discipline of the lower appetites, otherwise known 
as the virtue of temperance, is. not established without strong and 
repeated efforts on the part of reason, or the rational appetite, that 



12 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

is, the will, to enforce obedience to its commands. It may be added 
that the obedience of appetite to reason is never quite complete. 
Temperance is like a sovereign insecurely seated on his throne, and 
needing, when rebellion waxes high, to call in the aid of a superior 
power. The habit will not work automatically: it is not self- 
sufficient. 

Justice regulates our dealings with other persons. Fortitude and 
temperance work within the self, and secure order at home. As 
for prudence, there is no department of human action which pru- 
dence should not pervade. Therefore, it has been said: "Tem- 
perance and fortitude in the home department; justice for foreign 
affairs ; with prudence for premier." 

The question has been asked whether the virtues are separable 
one from another, whether, for instance, one can be courageous 
without being temperate, or exercise liberality while neglecting 
religion? If the four cardinal virtues are taken, not as distinct 
virtues, but as common elements of all virtue, it is clear that they 
can not be separated. In all virtue discretion (prudence), rectitude 
(justice), moderation (temperance), and firmness (fortitude) are 
inseparably conjoined. The question can be raised only when the 
virtues are considered as distinct from one another. One cardinal 
virtue is not another, e. g., justice is not fortitude, that we allow. 
May not in the same person one of these virtues flourish in the 
absence of one or more of the other three? Does not plain experi- 
ence evince that the sailor is brave, but not temperate; and that 
many a man is temperate, and just to fellowmen, but not just to 
God in that he wholly discards the virtue of religion? In answer 
to this somewhat intricate question we must distinguish between 
a virtue and the good acts which that virtue is apt to elicit. Those 
acts, as we have seen, may be done in the absence of the virtue : a 



THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 



n 



man may show liberality once in a while without having the virtue 
of liberality. Much more may he do acts of liberality here and there, 
without having some other virtue, as temperance or religion. A 
man of no religion may subscribe handsomely to a hospital — it may 
be, I allow, out of the virtue of liberality, but his mere subscription 
is no certain argument of that virtue. The act may be motived by 
ostentation or human respect and fear of public opinion ; or he may 
give out of a certain native predisposition to fling his money 
about, a predisposition which makes excellent material for virtue, 
but is not of itself the virtue of liberality before it has been 
trained according to reason. What seems to be virtue may 
be a mere chance combination of good nature with happy cir- 
cumstances. What seems to be virtue may keep up the semblance 
only because it has never been tried by temptation. It may be a 
keeping up of appearance out of love of respectability and desire to 
make one's way in society ; and that is not virtue. Still I would not 
deny that a man may have one virtue and not another — liberality, 
for instance, and not religion — provided his lack of that second 
virtue be due wholly or chiefly to ignorance, misapprehension, weak- 
ness and frailty. But if a man casts any one virtue which carries \ 
duties in its train — casts it out wilfully and against his conscience — 
I should gravely doubt his possession of any other virtue. How- 
ever much he did the acts, I should doubt whether they were mo- 
tived by the motive of the virtue. A man who spurns conscience 
upon one ground is not likely to be really conscientious upon an- 
other. Henry VIII affected zeal for religion and for the sanctity 
of marriage. His loose and dissolute life gave the lie to his zeal. 
What shall we say of Louis XIV? We must be cautious in judg- 
ing of individuals. But this we may observe in general. Virtues 
are like the timbers of a roof. Dry rot, set in on one beam, does 



i 4 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

not at once bring the whole roof down. Nor does the decay of one 
particular virtue work the immediate ruin of a man's whole moral 
character and destroy all his other virtues, the gradual growth of 
years of well-doing. They may remain some considerable time un- 
injured. But evil spreads, and things move from bad to worse. 

By doing our duty we do acts, from which acts virtues are apt to 
result. Nor is a sinner condemned precisely for his vices, but for 
those sinful acts which have engendered vices in his soul. We are 
not bound to do all good acts possible, else there would be no differ- 
ence between counsel and commandment. Good acts indeed are 
often inconsistent one with another. It is good to marry, good to re- 
ceive holy orders; but you can not do both. \[n every good man. 
grown up, there will be found the cardinal virtues, but not every 
subordinate virtue which ranks under those general heads. Some 
virtues he may not have been in a position to practise. You can not 
practise clemency if you have no authority to punish; nor munifi 
cence if you are not a rich man. Some virtues grow out of acts 
which are rarely practicable or obligatory — magnanimity, for ex- 
ample, which is the maintenance of a proper attitude of mind in 
reference to high honors. Some virtues are as the garments of the 
soul, covering its nakedness and its shame; others are as jewelry; 
now no one is obliged to wear jewelry. 

The ancient Greeks, who first made out the list of cardinal vir- 
tues, also enumerated four corresponding goods of man. They 
were health, strength, beauty, and what we may call a competence, 
or a competent position in society. Fortitude and temperance evi- 
dently answer to strength and beauty respectively : they are spiritual 
strength and beauty. The drunkard, or the unchaste youth, is 
morally and spiritually ugly, though he perceive it not: higher 
powers perceive it. The Greeks said : "Vice is unknown to itself." 



THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 15 

Prudence is the being of sound mind and sound judgment in mat- 
ters of primary importance. Prudence takes "a healthy view" of 
the general situation. Justice is the moral attribute that fits us to 
be members of human society; for no society, not even that of 
thieves, could hold together, were the members all unjust to one 
another. In this, justice is like a "competence," which means a 
place in the social organism, with associates and friends to converse 
with, and sufficient pecuniary substances to maintain the position 
honorably. 

Or we may put the relation in this way. [Prudence is the safe- 
guard of health; fortitude keeps up strength; temperance, which 
includes chastity, is the defender of beauty; while justice prevents 
a man abusing his worldly wealth and position. So that, without 
the cardinal virtues, health, strength, beauty and social competence, 
may prove a curse rather than a blessing to the owner. And the 
same of all other corporal and material advantages. 



1 6 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 



III. PRUDENCE 



Prudence is right reason applied to practice in view of the final 
end of life. Prudence is apt to give advice on points that appertain 
to the whole life of man and his last end; while in any given art 
there is the office of advising on points that appertain to the proper 
end of the said art. Hence some persons, as being apt to give ad- 
vice on matters of war or seamanship, are called prudent com- 
manders, or prudent navigators, but not prudent absolutely; but they 
alone are prudent absolutely who give good advice for the main 
conduct of life. 

An imprudent person is one who goes the wrong way about getting 
what he wants, and in consequence does not get what he wants. He 
has no practical discernment of the bearing of given means on a 
given end. That is exactly what prudence does discern. Prudence is 
concerned with means to ends, not with ends in themselves. Prudence 
supposes the end, and that a good end, namely, as has been said, 
the final end of human life, which is in fact man's chief good. 
To take means cunningly to a bad end is not the virtue of pru- 
dence; it is called in Scriptural language the prudence of the -flesh. 
St. Paul says : The prudence of the flesh is death (Rom. viii, 6) ; 
and the author of Proverbs warns us : There is no prudence against 
the Lord (Prov. xxi, 30). The most imprudent thing for man 
is to do anything that involves the loss of his soul, though by 
it he gain kingdoms. Hence the instruction with which a Retreat 
usually opens, on the end and purpose for which man was created, 
is really a lesson in prudence. 

Prudence may be called an intellectual virtue, inasmuch as it has 
its seat in the understanding: but inasmuch as it directs the under- 



PRUDENCE 



*7 



standing to a practical purpose, it is a moral virtue. Art also re- 
sides in the understanding, and directs it to a practical purpose; 
but art is concerned with production, prudence with conduct or 
behaviour. Prudence, then, is not mere speculation. He who sees 
the right way to take, but takes it not, can not be called a prudent 
person. He may be a philosopher, or a critic, but he is not prudent. 
Nor does prudence merely lay down general principles, but it di- 
rects their application to a particular case: for prudence is a prac- 
tical virtue, and all practise is in particulars. In that it is like con- 
science. In fact, prudence may be called a well-enlightened 
conscience, in so far as conscience has to do with the future. 

None of the other three cardinal virtues can work' without pru- 
dence. Prudence must enlighten them in their action, pointing out 
the measure of temperance, the bounds of fortitude, the path of 
justice, everywhere indicating the golden mean, which other virtues 
aim at, but which prudence alone discerns. ' Without prudence 
virtue would go ablundering and aslumbering in the dark ; true virtue 
walks with eyes open, knowing what it is about, what it wants and 
why : now the open eye of virtue is prudence. On the other hand, 
prudence itself perishes in the absence of temperance, fortitude, and 
justice. For prudence is a guide only to a good end practically 
desired. But the soul unendowed with habits of temperance, for- 
titude, and justice, readily fixes its desires on evil ends — on base 
and immoderate pleasures, on fraudulent gains, or hair-brained 
enterprises, or cowardly escapes; and in reference to all such ends, 
as we have seen, there is no prudence, though there may be con- 
siderable cunning. 

There is imprudence in every sin, inasmuch as every sin is an 
aberration and a swerving from our last end. But the name of im- 
prudence is specially reserved for sins more obviously characterized 



1 8 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

by recklessness, folly, and want of thought, such as many of the 
excesses of youth. It was a saying of the old philosophers that 
"passion mars the judgment of prudence." Indeed we need no 
philosophers to tell us that; it is matter of daily experience. Under 
excitement we lose our heads. This shows how prudence differs 
from mere knowledge, and from the critical faculty whereby we 
judge of the conduct of others. In their cooler moments men com- 
monly discern well enough the ways of wisdom from the ways of 
folly, and coolly mark and stigmatize an acquaintance who is tread- 
ing the latter path. A much rarer gift is the keeping of knowl- 
edge before our eyes in time of action, so as to judge rightly, and 
act rightly, and not be borne away by a blind impulse. That habit 
of having your knowledge available in action is the virtue of pru- 
dence. In doing wrong a man does not act according to his knowl- 
edge, he looks the wrong way; like a perverse scholar, he raises 
his eyes from his book and cites his text incorrectly. The land is 
made desolate because there is none that thinketh in his heart 
(Jerem. xii, n). 

The matters in which a young man most needs the restraint of 
prudence are (i) the care of his health, (2) the use of his time, 
(3) the spending of his money, (4) the choice of his books, (5) the 
making of friends, (6) the giving away of his heart, affections and 
love, (7) the election of a state of life. There is such a thing as 
being what is called "hipped" (hypochondriacal), absurdly anxious 
about one's health. This weakness in a young man is pitiful, hap- 
pily also rare. Many a young man conducts himself, as the Greeks 
said, "like an immortal," as though nothing could possibly impair 
his strength, and disease were for him forever out of the question. 
Some are thus reckless in giving themselves to work, but far more 
in the pursuit of pleasure. Late hours, strong drink, excessive 



PRUDENCE 1 9 

tobacco, mad excitement, are undermining their strength, shorten- 
ing their days, storing disease in their system, while they heed it not. 
And worse things still are befalling their immortal souls. Pru- 
dence is flung to the winds, and every other virtue thrown after it. 
Many who avoid these grosser excesses overeat themselves; some 
neglect exercise, a neglect for which they must pay dearly in later 
life; some, an increasing number perhaps, overdo their exercise, 
put so much into muscle that the brain languishes and mental labour 
becomes impossible. And some overstrain heart and arteries. 
Bodily exercise profiteth but little, wrote St. Paul (I Tim. iv, 8), 
in an age and country of athletes. Ask yourself: "Am I going to 
be a professional?" "No; a lawyer, doctor, engineer." Then train 
accordingly. In middle age, to look no further, the training of an 
athlete will profit you little, if it has ousted all other training. Stif- 
fening limbs and a stagnant mind make a sad contemplation 'for 
one's fiftieth birthday. Even in this world the mind should outlive 
the body. 

One almost hesitates to preach prudence in the spending of 
money, lest one should seem to recommend avarice, that love of 
money which the Apostle pronounces to be the root of all evil 
(I Tim. vi, 10). But avarice is not characteristic of youth. The 
not buying too many attractive things for yourself, the occasional 
going without something that you would like and might very well 
have, is an excellent formation in the way of prudence. More 
especially excellent is it if a poor neighbour and not yourself reaps 
the pecuniary profit of your saving. Almsgiving, in fact, is a 
practical method of hitting upon the golden mean between ex- 
travagance and miserliness. I once heard a dispute in a railway 
carriage as to the nature of charity, or almsgiving. One man would 
have it that charity consisted in giving away what you did not want. 



2o THE CARDIXAL VIRTUES 

The other contended that the only true charity was giving away 
what you did want. At least there can be no doubt which of these 
two charities is more like the charity of Christ, who for us gave 
away His life-blood. 

He has not a prudent care of his health who eats any and all 
things, and that without stint or measure. Not more prudent — 
nay, even less prudent, erring in a graver matter — is he who devours 
every book, magazine or paper that he finds at a railway book stall, 
or even in less reputable places. Surely it is a good rule neither 
to eat trash nor to read it. A well-fed man perhaps may venture 
on a little trashy food-stuff now and again ; but what becomes of him 
whose staple diet is trash? Ask your doctor. And if a Catholic 
reads promiscuously socialist tracts, sickening love stories, sensa- 
tional murders, divorce cases, blasphemies against the Bible or 
against the goodness of God, but never a book of devotion or of 
Catholic instruction, scarce even a Catholic newspaper except for 
politics, will he not soon become a spiritual dyspetic? The 
poison of all this bad nutriment gets into his blood : on the smallest 
irritation the sore breaks out, he dies to God and to His Church, 
and is a Catholic no longer. To warrant your reading a book it is 
not enough that everyone is talking about it. Books come and go 
like songs, nay, they do not stay so long. Who will be talking 
about this favorite flashy production this time next year? Read 
rather what promises to be of permanent value to heart and mind. 
A venerable Vicar Apostolic was once dining at the table of a great 
lady. She asked him whether he had read a certain book, which 
was making a great stir at the time. He answered drily: "No, 
madam, I durst not." On the other side you will find people who 
dare not read Catholic books, nor listen to the reproaches of their 



PRUDENCE 21 

own conscience. They think it imprudent to be very conscientious, 
or to hear a message from Rome. 

When not coerced, a man is ruled by his first principles and by 
his friends. By an act of free will he may break away from either, 
when he thinks it worth his while to deliberate and make up his 
mind anew; but he will not ordinarily do so. It is matter, there- 
fore, of the highest prudence what first principles, or maxims of 
conduct, we admit, and what friends we choose. We need eminently 
good principles and good friends. Destitute of principles, or hav- 
ing none but bad ones, a man is called "unprincipled." Destitute 
of friends, a man is "friendless" ; he, too, is in a bad way, however 
rich and powerful he may otherwise be. If friendship be not exactly 
a virtue, at least it is a means to the better exercise of all the vir- 
tues; everything is done better by being done in concert. You 
should have friends, if you can find them. Friends are not to be 
found like blackberries, growing in every hedge. They have to be 
sought and picked with care; and in some forlorn situations good 
friends are not to be found at all: one has to fall back upon God 
alone, like Daniel among the lions. The first stage of friendship is 
acquaintanceship; it is often impossible, often undesirable, to pass 
beyond that stage. An acquaintance passes into a friend, when 
we not only know him but lead him, and in turn are led by him. 
I am not defining friendship, but this mutual leading and being 
led is at least part of its essence. He is not your friend, who 
will never alter his course one point at your suggestion. A 
pair of friends are not often of equal power. Usually, one on the 
whole leads, and the other on the whole is led, though under pro- 
test. It is a responsibility to lead ; it is a risk to be led. Responsi- 
bility and risk should both be taken up with prudence. Therefore, 



22 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

be prudent in making friends. And what shall I say of prudence 
in making love? Not to make it to one who never can be your 
wife, or who, you are resolved, never shall be your wife, is a point 
of prudence and one or two other virtues besides. The Catholic 
Church dislikes mixed marriages ; yet they often become a necessity. 
It is prudent to hold off from such necessity while you may, while 
the matter is only in its first stages: later on it will be too late. 
Antecedently to any definite engagement, a Catholic man should 
desire a Catholic wife; and this desire should be a true wish and 
preference. On this whole matter there is a homely proverb to 
bear in mind, "Marry in haste and repent at leisure. " 

Yet prudence does not always hesitate and hold back. Cases 
occur in which it is the highest prudence to venture all. Cases 
occur in which it is a mistake to dwell on restraining considerations 
— at a charity sermon, for example. It is prudent not to rely on one's 
own prudence exclusively. We must consult God in prayer, and 
that earnestly and at some length in important matters. We must 
take advice in novel situations and under difficulties and temp- 
tations never 'experienced before. Our blessed Saviour in the 
cruel surprises of His agony in the garden — the surprise of human 
sin all laid at His door — received in humility the comforting words 
of the angel, and thrice went to His disciples to seek support from 
them. He prayed and sought counsel. He condescended for our 
imitation. On the eve of conflict He was prudent. 



TEMPERANCE 23 



IV. TEMPERANCE 

Temperance is the virtue contrary to the two deadly sins of 
gluttony and lust. As against the former it represents abstinence, 
or moderation in solid food generally, and sobriety, which is 
moderation in the particular matter of intoxicating drinks. In a 
scientific treatment of this virtue we must not be led away by 
newspaper association. Temperance is not the exclusive appanage 
of temperance societies and teetotalers. Temperance does not mean 
total abstinence, and abstinence is quite independent of Fridays 
and flesh meat. Temperance is the sum of the three subordinate 
virtues of abstinence, sobriety and chastity. 

Temperance is a habit residing in the sensitive appetite, when 
that appetite has come to be "broken in" by frequent acts of self- 
restraint. For these acts we have occasion every day ; so that every 
day we should be growing in temperance. If we are failing to do 
that we must be growing into the habits which make the contrary 
vices : gluttony, drunkenness and lust. 

Appetite unrestrained easily carries man to the extreme of 
excess. Here, then, is the good of temperance. It is solely a re- 
straining, not an impelling virtue. Against the extreme of too little, 
appetite is its own guardian. Against the extreme of too much appe- 
tite is restrained by the habit of temperance, gradually brought to 
reside in it, formed and planted there, by repeated acts of reason 
and will, forcing appetite back into due bounds, till at last appetite 
of itself, like a tamed beast, is more or less apt not to exceed the 
just limit. Then the man is said to be "temperate." 

It may be asked how it is that temperance seems sometimes to 
push men into an extreme, not merely restraining appetite, but 



24 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

refusing it altogether. Thus the total abstainer refuses the crav- 
ing for strong drink entirely; he never will gratify it. The priest 
and the religious renounce even the lawful indulgences of the 
married state. We reply by the enunciation of a principle which 
the old sixteenth-century Protestantism stupidly repudiated — that 
besides commandment there is counsel, and that not every act 
morally praiseworthy is also obligatory. Where duty ends gener- 
osity begins. Not every virtue lies between two vicious extremes 
immediately conterminous with itself, but sometimes there is a 
further virtue intervening between that virtue and the vicious ex- 
treme. Thus between justice and the vicious extreme of prodi- 
gality there intervenes the further virtue of liberality. Liberality 
may be styled a more excellent justice, and virginity (in the pres- 
ent order of providence) a more excellent chastity. But observe, 
the main central virtue, as justice, is for all men to practise; the 
more excellent virtue, as liberality, is not for all, and in some 
cases it would be a mistake to attempt it. We say well, be just 
before you are generous. Further, the golden mean is not the 
same for all persons. Half a bottle of wine is not too much for 
some men to drink, for others it would be a sinful excess. For 
some persons total abstinence from spirituous liquors is not a work 
of supererogation, it is a dow r nright duty. They have lost the 
ability to drink in moderation; and their only way of remaining 
sober is by never touching alcohol in any shape. They may be 
likened to patients where doctors forbid them to touch flesh- 
meat. One mutton chop is too much for Henry, and one-half pint 
of beer is more than can be safely allowed to George. What looks 
like an extreme is sometimes no more than the golden mean of 
duty for this particular individual ; sometimes it is a feat of gener- 
osity, still in the golden mean, for that mean is not a forever fixed 



TEMPERANCE 25 

point. But, as I have said, such generous outrunning of duty can 
not be inculcated indiscriminately in all cases. In some it would 
be downright folly, or even wickedness. Not all men and women 
are fit for the religious state. It is questionable whether total 
abstinence should be preached to all as a counsel, certainly not to 
all as a duty. We have no right to add an eleventh commandment. 
To say this much is not to deny that for many in their youth total 
abstinence is an excellent counsel; that for many grown men, 
never themselves the victims of drunken habits, but obliged to live 
in the society of free drinkers, total abstinence is a great preserva- 
tive. The simple words, "I am a total abstainer," have kept many 
a man and many a youth out of a den of infamy. Still, be it re- 
membered, total abstinence is not the sum and substance of all 
Christian virtue. Though hell be full of drunkards, still heaven 
is not the birthright of every total abstainer. It is a weakness of 
human nature to expect one virtue to do duty for all. 

As regards the vices opposite to temperance, an important dis- 
tinction is to be drawn between him who sins by outbursts of pas- 
sion and him whose very principles are corrupt. The former in 
doing evil acknowledges it to be evil, and is prone to repent of 
it afterwards ; the latter has lost his belief in virtue and his admira- 
tion for it; he drinks in iniquity like water, with no after-qualms; 
he glories in his shame. The former is reclaimable, the latter is 
reprobate — at least it takes a miracle of divine grace to reclaim 
him: his intellect as well as his heart is vitiated: faith and works, 
fine feeling and sense of honour, all have gone by the board. No 
hard and fast line of division, however, can in every case be 
drawn between sinning from passion and sinning on principle; but 
cases of the one shade into cases of the other, and by frequent 
indulgence of passion principle is brought gradually to decay. 



26 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

Sinning daily and not repenting, a man loses his good principles. 
But repenting daily, or frequently, he keeps them. 

The chief sins against temperance are drunkenness and im- 
purity. The evil of drunkenness consists in voluntarily parting 
with your reason in such a way that under this induced privation 
of reason, and under the influence of the stimulant, you are likely 
to do acts contrary to reason and God's law. It is true that in 
the act of doing them you are not your own master: but in the 
renouncement of control over yourself, and submission to the 
blind control of liquor, you were your own master, and there and 
then in parting with your reason you sinned. You have let the 
tiger loose, you can not get him back to his cage; meanwhile you 
are responsible for his devastations. There is no crime of murder, 
or lust, or irreligion, that may not be committed in drunken fury. 
This holds good even of one solitary act of deliberate drunkenness : 
but when we come to consider the condition of the house and 
family of the habitual drunkard, the case comes out worse. Quite 
unnecessary here to describe the interior of a house where father 
drinks, or mother drinks, or both. Quite unnecessary to visit the 
home for inebriates, or the lunatic asylum. To whom is woe? to 
whose father is woe? to whom brawling? to whom pitfalls? to 
whom wounds without cause? to whom bloodshot eyes? Is it not 
to them that linger over their wine, and make a business of empty- 
ing cups? Look not on the wine when it is golden, when its colour 
gleameth in the glass; it goeth in pleasantly, but in the end it will 
sting like a serpent, and spread poison like an asp. Thine eyes 
shall see strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse 
things; and thou shalt be as one who slumbers in the midst of the 
sea, and as a steersman fallen asleep that has lost the helm. And 
thou shalt say, They have beaten me, but I had no pain, they hauled 



TEMPERANCE 27 

me, but I felt it not; when shall I arise and find wine again? 
(Prov. xxiii, 29-35). 

St. Thomas quaintly enumerates as "daughters," i e., effects, 
of gluttony and drunkenness — inept mirth, buffoonery, unclean- 
ness, much talking, and dulness of mind for intellectual things. 
Had the saint seen much of the dwellings of drunkards, he might 
have enumerated more "daughters" and worse. 

Drunkenness is the disgrace of man, but it is the ruin of woman. 
Those poor creatures who infest our streets are nearly all of 
them victims of drink. They are either actually under its effects 
or are seeking money to get it. This, at least, is the case with the 
poor; of the well-to-do one had better not speak. If a woman of 
the humbler sort is safe from liquor, she is safe from shame and 
public misery. Any Catholic man who is sober, frugal, and in- 
dustrious, has married a good wife, and approaches the Sacraments 
regularly, is fairly safe against the sin of impurity. But drink 
spoils all. More than worse sins, drunkenness preys upon the 
physical system, upon the nerves and brain; and through the inter- 
connection of body and mind the physical disease carries with it 
an impotence of will, a thorough untrustworthiness under any 
solicitation or temptation, so that the one chance for so debilitated 
a subject is entire flight from every occasion of sin — not an easy 
thing to realize as life ordinarily goes. Without being a religious, 
this person has come to need the graces and also the restrictions 
of religious life, simply to keep him in the path of the com- 
mandments. 

Still it must be confessed that, away from all abuse of alcohol, 
in many circumstances of age, temperament, employment and com- 
pany, chastity is a most difficult virtue to practise. Quotidiana 
pugna, "a daily battle," says St. Augustine, and he adds, rara vie- 



28 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

toria, "seldom victorious." Seldom victorious, if we measure victory 
by the Christian standard, the standard of Christ Himself (Matt, v, 
27-30), which requires chastity in every human act, seen or un- 
seen, chastity in every word, chastity in every deliberate thought 
and desire. The world pronounces this an unattainable ideal and 
substitutes another of its own setting up, the standard of respecta- 
bility. The standard may be formulated thus: "Do as you like, 
so long as you do it on the quiet, and do not upset the peace of 
families ; there must be no scandals." This is a fair standard, if we 
are to be judged by the world only. But if, after the world has 
done with us and we with the world, we must all be made manifest 
before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the 
proper things of the body (or, as the Greek has it, the things 
incurred through the body), according as he hath done, whether it 
be good or evil (II Cor. v, 10) — then it will be wise of us to live 
up to the law that is administered in that court wherein we shall be 
tried finally and sentenced irrevocably. We must not give in to the 
suggestion of the flesh and of the world, that this is an impossible 
law to observe. How do they know ? Neither world nor flesh has 
ever made any serious effort to observe the law. We may repeat 
in a nobler arena the answer made by a British officer, when told 
that the capture of a certain position was impossible: "Impossible? 
why, I have got the order in my pocket." We have the command 
of God, and that can not be impossible — with His grace. About 
grace, this is not the occasion to speak; let that topic stand over. 
Grace will never enable us to dispense with the measures dictated 
by natural prudence. These we will consider ; and as the difficulty 
is undeniably great, and the danger serious, these precautions must 
be adopted in all earnestness. First, then, we must have a clear 
understanding of the lie of the law. That is so important that it 



TEMPERANCE 2g 

shall be made the subject of our next address. For the moment I 
say: Keep your will habitually firmly bent on good, and confirm it 
by repeated acts. Keep your understanding active on topics in- 
nocent, interesting, and elevating. Keep your imagination clean, 
so far as it lies under the dominion of your will. Keep your eyes 
from the curious study of objects unchaste and provocations of 
evil desire. You can not help seeing many such; you need not 
stare at them and con them over. Surely it is not your custom to 
stare at every person you meet as though you were a backwoods- 
man, and a fellowman were a novelty. You may see and not look 
hard, hear and not listen or show interest. You are master of 
your amusements, if not of your employment and work: where do 
you go to enjoy yourself? where do you spend your evenings? 
what theatre do you patronize? what music? Avoid artificial in- 
centives to sin. Let no temptation take hold of you but such as is 
human, or part of the ordinary course of human nature; and God 
is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which 
you are able, but will make with temptation issue that you may be 
able to bear it (I Cor. x, 13). Aim at being too busy for tempta- 
tion to settle on you ; labour hard in your profession, have hobbies, 
take exercise, be manly and play out-of-door games. But re- 
member — be this said by way of warning, not of reprobation — for 
the matter of purity, athletes have dangers all their own. 



3 o THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 



V. HUMAN ACTS 

Not everything that a man does is a human act. A perfect idiot 
does no human acts, nor a child that has not come to the use of 
reason, nor a man asleep or under an anesthetic. Things that we 
do mechanically, automatically, without thinking, have little of the 
human act about them. The beating of the heart is not a human 
act, nor digestion, nor respiration for the most part. "Human act," 
then, is a technical term; and a thorough understanding and bear- 
ing in mind of this technicality is a wonderful encouragement under 
temptation, and a great safeguard against scruples. A human act 
is an act of which a man is master, to do or not to do : it is an act 
of free will. It is an expression of self. It is a man's own act, not 
of other agents about him. It is not an organic process going on 
in his body : it is an output of his soul and spirit. Man is responsible 
to God for all his human acts, and to his fellowman for many of 
them : and for none but his own human acts is any man responsible. 
What is not a human act can never be a sin. What is not a human 
act can never be an act of virtue, nor go towards the building up 
of a habit of virtue. Only through his own human act can a man 
ever come to the torment of hell-fire. When a man has sinned 
actually and grievously, some human act on his part is a necessary 
condition of divine forgiveness. No temptation, as such, is ever a 
human act on the part of the tempted. No temptation, therefore, 
whatever feeling it involves, however vehement and protracted, is 
ever a sin. Sin is a human act of consent to temptation, a consent 
whereof the man was master to give or refuse it, a consent which is 
no blind vehemence of appetite, but an act discerned by the under- 



HUMAN ACTS 31 

standing and conscience for its value and significance before God, 
and so sanctioned by the free will. 

In man's mind and body, then, a vast number of things go on 
which are not human acts. The soul, philosophers say, is a simple 
substance ; but, then, they are speaking of the soul as separate from 
the body, in which condition we know about it wondrous little. 
In the body the soul is the "form" of a highly complex organism, 
and in its operations, if not in its substance, it becomes as complex 
as the body which it informs. That accounts for certain facts of 
pathology, which to-day are receiving much attention — I mean the 
resolution, in nervous disease, of one personality into three or four 
seeming personalities at variance with one another. This disinte- 
gration may perhaps be accounted for as a fact of ordinary experi- 
ence abnormally magnified and exaggerated by disease. All men 
have their moods, often conflicting moods. We hear people saying 
such things as this: "I feel quite a different man on Sunday from 
what I am on a weekday." When we feel good (the "Dr. Jekyl" 
of Stephenson's story), we have to dread the return of the "other 
fellow" ("Mr. Hyde"), who feels anything but good. Not unfre- 
quently both Jekyl and Hyde, both the good and the bad man in 
us, seem to be present together, or in quick succession, and there 
arises a fierce conflict. Alas for the "simple substance" of the 
philosophers ! There seem to be two men in one struggling for the 
mastery. This situation may readily pass into sin through the weak- 
ness of the will. Or the will may stand firm, and the temptation 
remain a temptation, and nothing more. In the latter case you have 
what Aristotle calls enkratcia and St. Thomas continentia. Where 
there is sin, but as yet no habit of sin, you have akrasia. Aristotle 
says that akrasia is not wickedness, meaning that it is not a vice. 
There is much on this subject in the pages of St. Augustine. The 



32 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

classical passage on it is Romans vii, 5 sq. What fact shall make 
all the difference between temptation and sin? What remains to 
mark the unity of human nature under these divisions ? If the man 
falls physically into two parts, or becomes wholly other than the 
man he was, his responsibility ceases. The original man can not 
be taxed with the doings of the man that has supplanted him, nor 
of the part that has asserted its independence and seceded from him. 
But it is not true that the man does fall physically into two parts, or 
becomes wholly other than the man he was. Unity remains, and 
the centre of unity, government. The act of government, decisive 
and authoritative, is the human act. That act emanates from one 
only of the conflicting elements within the man, his will. It is an 
act of will, it comes of will, not of blind passion and sense. For the 
nonce it is but ill obeyed : its voice is heard but in a narrow region, 
while rebellion rages all around; but the rebels will return to their 
duty if the will remains firm. 

Meanwhile its utterance suffices in the ethical order to render all 
their proceedings nugatory and invalid — racial, not personal ; physi- 
cal, not moral. Young and inexperienced souls are poorly alive to 
these distinctions : they little understand how narrow at times is the 
circle of will-power, the theatre of responsibility. Finding so much 
of their nature for the moment beyond their control, they draw the 
blind and cowardly inference that all control is impossible. They 
fancy that they have sinned, that they can not but sin, and seeking 
no further to restrain themselves they actually do sin. Taking 
temptation for sin, and finding no escape from temptation, they 
accept sin as inevitable. Christians though they be, with the light 
of Christian teaching at hand, and the strength of Christian Sacra- 
ments within them, yet they go with the pagan multitude: having 
their understandings darkened, through the ignorance that is in 



HUMAN ACTS 33 

them, in despair they give themselves over to impurity, to the work- 
ing of all uncleanness in unchecked lustful desire (Ephes. iv, 17-19, 
Greek text). 

A number of small advantages gained, week by week, over an 
enemy in the field may, in the end, necessitate that enemy's entire 
surrender. A great "turn-over" in trade is made by an accumula- 
tion of small gains, so small that the particular transaction which 
brought in each seemed hardly a gain at all. And so it is with the 
training of appetite. The will in particular conflicts can do little; 
it fights what look like drawn battles. But in the long run the 
power of good will shows itself. Appetite, so blustering and 
domineering, by a series of steady resistances is brought low and 
tamed. This tamed condition of appetite, as we have so often 
found occasion to say, is the virtue of temperance. A medical man 
once wrote: "No appetite is really so amenable to reason as the 
sexual propensities." And generations of virtuous men have verified 
the observation. 

Here, as so often, a thing that is called hard is done or not done, 
according as people go the right or the wrong way about the doing 
of it. The right way to go about resisting temptation is to behave 
well out of temptation and stand fore-armed against its assaults. 
Many things that are not free at the time they come upon us are 
said to be free in causa, "free in their cause," having been caused 
by some free act of ours, as a man may catch a fever by going 
into an infected room; if he knew what he was doing, his fever 
is "free in its cause," not in its actual access. And this doctrine 
carries us in sight of cases that frequently occur and are hard to 
settle. Their settlement must be sought at proper sources as they 
occur. A few general principles alone can be laid down here. Al- 
though temptations are often "free in their cause," yet we are not. 



34 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

bound to avoid every cause that may bring on temptation. A rule 
like that would make life an intolerable burden. We have to con- 
sider whether the cause be naturally allied to the temptation, whether 
it be of itself as it were the beginning of the sin. That would be 
a cogent reason for avoidance. Again, the likelihood of our yield- 
ing to the temptation or withstanding it must be reckoned with in 
each case. We should fly from what brings on a temptation to 
which we are pretty certain to yield. Again, consider whether the 
exciting cause be an action which would be pronounced a "queer 
thing to do" for a person in our position, or whether it be a thing 
which good men, our equals, ordinarily and laudably do. As a rule, 
apart from special proneness to sin, what is laudable and lawful in 
our equals is lawful also in us, temptation or no temptation. But 
we should not do "queer" things. This rule, not to do "queer" 
things, is a rule of high practical value. A cause "naturally allied 
to temptation" would be the prolonged and curious study of nude 
figures with which we had no professional concern ; the reading of 
a book whose whole good was its badness; the looking on at a 
play the point of which was the continual covert suggestion of evil. 
On the other hand, service in a smart cavalry regiment has its 
temptations, yet they are not "naturally allied" to such service, they 
are not part and parcel of it as such. Moreover, that service is 
entered by good men of your own standing, and none blames them 
for it. Some may foresee in the service certain temptations which, 
with their character, are pretty sure to be fatal. These we exhort 
to go elsewhere; or, if go to the army they must, we devise for 
them special spiritual aids and precautions. In the language of 
the Catechism this avoidance of temptations "free in their cause" 
is called the avoiding of "occasions of sin." Such occasions are 
distinguished as "remote" and "proximate." The latter only are 



HUMAN ACTS 



35 



we bound to avoid, when we can; or to fortify ourselves against 
by special precautions, when we can not. 

The will is free, as is supposed in the very definition of a "human 
act." At the same time the will is weak. It is weak against any 
strong motive presented from without, except it be armed by a 
strong habit of resistance, engendered by many acts of resistance, 
against such motive. Such a habit is a part of character. -Char- 
acter, then, which is something lasting, permanent, chronic, is a 
fortification against motive, impulsive, transient, acute. Any mo- 
tive may be strong against an unformed character, that is, in the 
absence of character: but where character has been formed and 
exists, those motives alone are strong which fit the character. Those 
motives are strong which chime in with pre-existent habits. The 
issue of a battle, fought, say, on the second of February, depends 
immediately upon the skill of the commander and the valor of the 
soldiery that day. Remotely, however, and quite as effectively, it 
may depend upon some operations conducted the previous Christ- 
mas. The battle was half decided ere ever it was fought. So with 
human acts. ) Not in the fierce rush of temptation only, but in the 
quiet current of ordinary life, a man's fidelity is tried. Such as he 
is silently making himself, such he will come out, when proved. 

To live habitually up to a high standard of holiness is the sole 
way of making oneself safe against a sudden access of tempta- 
tion. Therein lies the meaning of Our Lord's injunction: Watch, 
and what I say to you, I say to all, watch (Mark xiii, 35-37). 
The reason why people sin so easily when they are tempted is 
because they are too easy-going in daily life and habitually aspire 
too low. Knowing that none is ever sent to hell except for great 
wickedness, they fancy they may safely indulge themselves in every- 
thing, great wickedness alone excepted. They forget that at times 



36 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

a great fight is needed to keep out of great wickedness. Tempta- 
tion is sudden: the occasion for a great fight comes unexpectedly; 
and they are not ready. Many of us have lived through visitations 
of influenza. We are familiar with the process: influenza, pleuro- 
pneumonia, and then? Much depends on the violence of the at- 
tack, much on prompt retirement and careful nursing; ultimately 
all may turn on the vigour of the patient's constitution. Some con- 
stitutions seem bound to succumb to the first serious assault. Our 
character is our spiritual constitution. It is not made for us, as the 
Owenites said : it is daily being made and modified by us, by means 
of our daily human acts. Countless tiny shell-fish build up a coral- 
reef, or a chalk cliff; and countless acts make in time a character. 
Little acts come and go unnoticed; the result endures; and in the 
end we are surprised at its magnitude and permanence. Our daily 
acts, then, must be well done, excellently well done, at least with 
such excellence as is within our reach; in this daily excellence lies 
our eternal salvation. The kingdom of heaven is like unto a grain 
of mustard seed, which indeed is the least of all seeds; but when 
it is grown tip, it is greater than any herbs, and beeometh a tree 
(Matt, xiii, 31, 32). And conversely, of the reign of Satan in the 
heart. 

A strong character, for good or evil, is built up by the doing of 
many human acts. Weakness of character is the result of habitually 
neglecting to exercise the will, neglecting to energize and assert 
oneself, drifting down stream, passive when the current sets in to 
evil, listless even in lawful obedience when the stream happens to 
flow the right way. Self-assertion is not necessarily disobedience. 
The highest obedience is to assert yourself in the way commanded ; 
to throw yourself, heart and soul, will and intelligence, into the work 
prescribed. St. Thomas says there may be sin in mere inaction, in 



HUMAN ACTS 37 

simply not rising to the emergency when the hour has struck, with- 
out any positive determination not to rise. Inaction certainly pre- 
pares the way for sin, and for consent to all temptation. A good 
Christian is continually asserting himself, under God, against the 
world and the flesh and the devil. He is a man of many acts — not 
so much of external, palpable, active achievements, "copy" for the 
newspaper correspondent, as of unregistered, ever-recurring de- 
terminations of thought and will to God. 



38 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 



VI. OF FORTITUDE 

Like temperance, the virtue of fortitude also has its seat in the 
irrational appetite. That appetite sovereignly desires whatever makes 
for the maintenance of the animal nature in the individual and its 
propagation in the race, that is to say, eating and drinking and sexual 
intercourse. Temperance curbs the craving for these things. On 
the other hand, the same appetite sovereignly shuns that which 
is the destruction of the animal nature, namely death. Fortitude 
curbs the fear of death. But as the Hebrew Psalm cxxxix has it, 
man is fearfully and wonderfully made. Here is a wonder in the 
constitution of humanity, and of animal nature generally; the ir- 
rational appetite does not in every respect fear death: in some 
respects it is only too prone to rush upon death recklessly. We 
must recall what we have laid down already, that the irrational 
appetite is two fold. There is the blind craving after the pleas- 
urable; in that, the lowest portion of the irrational appetite, 
temperance has its seat. There is a higher, though still irrational 
portion; and this portion, oddly enough — except in Greek, where 
Plato named it thumos — has never had a distinctive name to 
itself in any language. St. Thomas called it the "irascible part." 
We are obliged to call it by such slang names as "pluck/' "go," 
for lack of a proper terminology. Perhaps "rage" might be a suit- 
able and decent name for this irrational portion. In the portion 
called rage {thumos) then there dwells the passion of impetu- 
osity. There also dwells in the same portion the counter-passion 
of fear. Impetuosity urges one to rush on death; fear, to fly 
from it. Fortitude has for its office to curb and moderate both 
these passions, but especially the passion of fear. Fortitude is a 



OF FORTITUDE 39 

mean between rashness (over-impetuosity) and cowardice (over- 
fear), coming, however, nearer to the former than to the latter. 
Fortitude thus is a two-sided virtue, moderating two opposite ten- 
dencies ; while temperance is one-sided, moderating desire alone. 

The man of fortitude, whom we will call the "brave man," is 
not "fearless," in the sense of being quite a stranger to fear. 
The man who has no fear in him at all is not brave, but fool- 
hardy. [The brave man is sensible to fear, but is not carried 
away by it; His mind subdues the fear, and braves the danger 
that nature shrinks from. Virtue, it may be observed, has not 
for its office to extirpate the passions, only to moderate them. 
The philosophers called Stoics enjoined the extirpation of the 
passions. Fear was never supposed to seize upon their "wise 
man," or "sage," nor anger, nor desire, nor any other passion or 
strong emotion; in all things their sage was calmly and sweetly 
reasonable, no more. [It may readily be imagined that men would 
sin less if they were devoid of all passion. • We must take human 
nature as we find it, and must make the best of our natural being. 
Passions are essential constituents of human nature as it comes un- 
der our experience. A being wholly devoid of passion would be 
something other than mortal man. Passions lead incidentally to 
much evil, but they also do good. To express the fact in a doggerel 

rhyme, 

"Passion nudges, 
Reason judges." 

An insult, for instance, rouses one to anger. Thereupon it 
is for my reason to judge how far the punishment of the offen- 
der would be a public good, and not (what is forbidden) a mere 
piece of private revenge. Passion renders some service as a 
stimulant; some service also as a corroborative, helping us on in 



4 o THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

a way that reason already approves ; such is the working of great 
indignation. Somehow a man who seems wholly passionless and 
unemotional is scarcely a lovable man. He is scarcely human. 
Like loves like, and humanity loves its kind. Be it admitted then 
that the breast of the brave man is not wholly inaccessible to the 
passion of fear. 

Fortitude is not an intellectual conviction, as Plato thought: it 
is a habit resting upon the intellectual conviction that 
the physical evil of death is not the worst of evils; but, as 
Aristotle says, "there are things which a man should never allow 
himself to be forced into doing — he should rather die." So the 
martyrs judged, when there was question of denying Christ. The 
highest act of fortitude is martyrdom. "Call a person a martyr," 
says St. Ambrose; "you need add no further praise." Establish 
the fact of martyrdom, and we may proceed to canonization with- 
out ulterior inquiry. 

"Agnis sepulcrum est Romulea in domo, 
Fortis puellae, martyris inclytae" 

"Agnes's tomb Is in the house of Romulus, brave girl, glorious 
martyr": so the Christian poet Prudentius. I forget the rest of 
his eulogium, but really no more is needed. "Of all virtuous 
acts," writes St. Thomas, "martyrdom pre-eminently argues the 
perfection of charity; because a man proves himself to love a 
thing the more, the more lovable the thing that he despises for its 
sake, and the more hateful the thing he chooses to suffer rather 
than lose it. But of all the goods of the present life man loves 
life most, and contrariwise most hates death, especially a death at- 
tended with pain and bodily torments. And therefore, of human 
acts, martyrdom is the most perfect of its kind, as being the sign 



OF FORTITUDE 4I 

of the greatest charity, according to the text: Greater love than 
this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends" 
(John xv, 13). In the natural order, the analogue of martyr- 
dom is a soldier's death on the battle-field. Fortitude is shown 
wherever death is braved on right principle in a noble cause; 
and, in a less degree, wherever anything painful to bear is smil- 
ingly encountered. 

Before we commend a daring deed, or a feat of endurance, 
as an act of fortitude, we must have reason to think that it is 
done on the proper motive of the virtue, i. e., for conscience' 
sake, and not on an inferior motive. It is not fortitude to 
venture life in what is manifestly a bad cause. It is not for- 
titude to stand your ground because mere human respect, or 
the threat of punishment, keeps you from running away. Mere 
stolidity and toughness of nerve and physical fibre is not forti- 
tude, but a predisposition thereto. In this way men are pre- 
disposed to fortitude by living much in the open air, like those 
Germans of whom we read in Caesar that for thirteen years 
they had not gone under a roof. Knowledge that there is no 
real danger is not fortitude, nor professional skill bringing the 
danger for you almost to zero. Lastly, anger emboldens, but 
bold deeds done under mere impulse of anger are not acts of 
fortitude. If the angry man is to be accounted brave, we can 
hardly refuse the praise of fortitude even to the drunkard, for 
"mighty deeds are done by wine." 

One would almost like to add a petition to the Litany, A 
timiditate bonorum, libera nos, Domine: "from the timidity of 
good people, good Lord, deliver us." The good are frequently 
at fault in the matter of the two virtues of fortitude and hope. 
A certain audacity lends itself to wickedness; the world is full 



42 THE CARDIXAL VIRTUES 

of bold bad men. Timidity restrains from evil, as also does 
ill-health, the "bridle of Theages/' as Plato named it; but when 
the timorous, or sickly, person has entered on the ways of vir- 
tue, his timidity restrains him from going very far in that direc- 
tion. He is no hero. That is one reason why good people are 
many, but saints are few. It takes immense courage to start a 
saint. That great saint and lion-hearted woman, St. Teresa, 
knowing this truth, declares that fortitude is more necessary than 
humility, in a beginner. A beginner has little to pride himself 
on, much to deter him. Many of us remain moral cowards all 
our lives, dreading pain, dreading trouble, dreading the opinion 
of men, uneasy in our relations with God, scrupulous, suspicious, 
narrow-minded, meticulous. A moral coward never gets far in 
sanctity himself, and keeps others back. ''Lord, give me faith 
and fortitude," was the prayer of a celebrated Oriental priest. 

Fortitude is shown in attack, in taking the offensive vigor- 
ously, but more in defence and endurance, for the latter is harder, 
being done more on principle, with less support from the pas- 
sion of impetuosity ; also it is more protracted. So much more 
difficult is it to endure that it is a rule in war, whenever you can, 
to exchange the more difficult for the easier, and convert your 
defence into an attack — which is a good rule in controversy also. 
The fortitude of a soldier comes out under the hardships of 
campaigning quite as much as in the wild rush of battle. The 
difficulty of martyrdom is just this, that the martyr has to stand 
wholly on the defensive; nay, he does not even defend himself, 
he endures. His, therefore, is the sublimest fortitude of all. 
The transition, then, is easy from fortitude to patience, which is 
usually ranked under fortitude. The object-matter of patience 
is not death ; a man is said to die not patiently, but bravely. The 



OF FORTITUDE 43 

object-matter of patience is the pain and annoyance of living, not 
to be saddened and soured under the burden of life. No virtue 
is more practical, none of more daily use. To whatever destina- 
tion a man is setting out, you may always advise him to take 
as part of his outfit a large store of patience. Those who have 
most to do with their fellow-men have most need of patience; 
and every man has need of patience with himself. There is 
the patience of the poor, which the Psalmist (Ps. ix, 19) assures 
us shall never be lost sight of by God; the patience of learner 
and teacher, of workman and employer (oh, that there were 
more of it!), and as every one knows, patience is sorely tried 
by sickness. Bishop Ullathorne, of Birmingham, has written a 
large book on "Christian Patience," perhaps the most successful 
of all his works. Patience is dearer to God than great ex- 
ploits. Better is the patient man than the strong; and he that 
governs his temper than the stormer of cities (Prov. xvi, 32). 
/.Impatience is one of the last sins that perfect men thoroughly 
overcome. He is a good man, indeed, who is patient on his 
death-bed. 

Patience and meekness differ in this, that meekness is a curb 
upon anger, whereas patience on the whole may be said rather 
to curb fear taking the shape of fretfulness. A strong man is 
usually good-natured. He feels himself equal to the daily bur- 
dens of life, and does not fret over them. He is not querulous, 
but he is hot tempered. He is prompt to beat down resistance, 
and to right his own and other people's wrongs; he does not 
pule and whine over them. People say he is impatient, he is 
really passionate and quick to anger — he is lacking in meekness, 
not in power to bear. There is a spice of cowardliness in all 
genuine impatience. The impatient man thinks that more is 



44 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

being put upon him, or fears that more will be put upon him, 
than he is able to bear. His spirit is overcome by the pros- 
pect of evil, which condition of defeat is a special note of fear. 
"The object of fear/' says St. Thomas, "is something in the 
future, difficult and irresistible. ,, A man is not afraid who 
thinks that he can bear what is being put upon him. And 
he is not impatient, either. An impatient man does ill in office 
— he has not the courage of his position — he lacks that fortitude 
which, like charity, beareth all things (I Cor. xiii) ; whereas a 
hot-tempered man, if he knows himself, may prove a capable 
ruler. What a hot-tempered man, who is also an able man, 
dislikes is slowness of execution, or bungling, or failure to per- 
ceive what is wanted, all which defects in his subordinates 
thwart his enterprises, and to his imagination look like wilful 
perversities and slights upon him, the commander. "To his 
imagination,'' I say, for it is imagination rather than intellect 
that makes a man angry. His intellect is aware that these de- 
fects for the most part are natural rather than voluntary. But 
so an impatient man gets into a rage with a pen that will not 
write, a lock that will not open, which is an irrational rage, similar 
to that of the lower animals. This so-called impatience, how- 
ever, is lack of meekness rather than of patience. It is called 
"impatience' ' perhaps because there is no handy word to express 
the contrary of meekness. But in all genuine impatience there 
is something of the cowardly, for patience ranks under fortitude. 
We may call patience a virtue-making virtue. Virtue comes 
of repetition of acts done with difficulty, weariness, and disap- 
pointment at one's own failures. The virtue is slow in coming; 
and when we think we have it, like other skill it fails us at an 
emergency. The notion then strikes us that we were not born 



OF FORTITUDE 45 

to be virtuous, or cannot be virtuous as yet — let the virtue come, 
if it will, in riper life. Such cowardice is to be checked by the 
thought that if the virtue be not forthcoming, there will set in 
instead the contrary vice, which, once it has become as a second 
nature, will be difficult to dislodge. Surely there should be a 
dash of heroism in every Christian character, heroism taking the 
form of patience and perseverance in well-doing. He that per- 
sever eth to the end shall be saved (Matt, x, 22). In the list 
of those whose portion is the second death, along with the tin- 
believing and the abominable and evil livers there appear, head- 
ing the list, the cowardly (Apoc. xxi, 8). There is a saying in 
England among the common people, "It's dogged as does it." 
In a recent national crisis there was revived a watchword of the 
party that ultimately proved victorious in the great Civil War, 
"We will see this thing through." God may well expect the 
children of light to dare for salvation what the children of this 
world (Luke xvi, 8) dare and bear for temporal ends. To be 
in heaven is to be with the martyrs, which means the having led 
a life on earth not wholly unlike martyrdom. The spirit of 
martyrs, the spirit of fortitude (Isai. xi, 2), that gift of the 
Holy Ghost which is breathed into us in Confirmation, should 
abide permanently in every Christian heart. Without this readi- 
ness to dare to do right and to suffer for doing so, religion 
comes to be as a pastime, or a conventionality for Sundays. 



46 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 



VII. OF JUSTICE 

Of justice Aristotle says that "neither evening star nor morning 
star is so admirable/' Justice is a habit residing in the will, and 
disposes the just man, in regard of other intelligent and rational 
beings about him, constantly and regularly to render to each his 
own. All justice is in relation to another. It is not by justice 
that a man governs himself, but by temperance and fortitude; for 
to govern oneself means to govern one's passions, and temperance 
and fortitude concern the passions. These virtuous habits, of 
course, are gained by acts of the will; and, when possessed, they 
are put into operation by the will. But not for that are they in the 
will. A habit is not put where it is unnecessary, and it is unnecessary 
where the power is competent of itself. Of itself the will as an in- 
telligent power is apt to rule the body on intelligent principles. The 
difficulty is the appetite getting in the way ; appetite, a blind power, 
bent on other than rational gratifications. Appetite then needs to 
be disciplined by virtue. When this discipline is perfect, there is 
no longer any obstruction to the will's right management of the 
body. Analogically, the habit or skill of bowling at cricket is not 
in the will, but in the muscular mechanism. Every youth has will 
enough to be a good bowler, but the muscles need training, and 
the nervous currents directing in a particular way. It would be a 
sarcastic remark to make of your bowler that he showed much 
good will, that he meant well, that his intentions were good. 

Self-government is secured when fortitude and temperance are 
secured; then the will governs at home with ease. But foreign 
relations — that is, relations with other selves — involve many difficul- 
ties over and above the rebellion of our own passions ; to overcome 






OF JUSTICE 



47 



these difficulties the will is strengthened by the virtue of justice. 
True, as we have seen, the virtues aid, and in a manner presuppose 
one another. Whoever is master of his own passions, is thereby 
immensely improved in all his dealings with his neighbours, the man 
who is master of his anger, for instance. A meek man will not 
strike in anger. A temperate woman will not steal to spend the 
money in drink. But though striking, stealing and other sins 
against justice are often committed under the promptings of pas- 
sion, not all sins against justice are traceable to that source. Most 
great frauds were perpetrated under the prompting of avarice ; now, 
avarice is not strictly a passion; it resides in the intelligence and 
imagination. Over and above the virtues that control passion, 
then, there is room and need for a further virtue, a virtue in the 
will, for the good conduct of foreign relations. Such is the virtue 
of justice. An anchorite, a perfect solitary, as was for long years 
St. Paul the first hermit, would have no need of justice, except in 
reference to his Creator, in which relation justice passes into re- 
ligion. But the more you are mixed up with your fellowmen, the 
more you require to be just, and it is not easy to be just. 

Justice renders to every man his own. But what is his own? 
One answer — not a sufficient and complete answer, but an answer 
that goes a certain way — is, "What the law allows him, and will 
punish you for if you do not render it to him." Justice then is 
obedience to law in all our relations with our fellowmen, and in 
this sense we call it general, or legal justice. A just man is a lazu- 
abiding man ; and a court of justice is a law-enforcing court. The 
law commands acts of all virtues, so far as is requisite for the gen- 
eral good of the commonwealth. Whoever thus practises legal 
justice, is a good citizen. You can not yet call him a patriotic 
citizen, for a patriot will volunteer to do for his country's sake 



48 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

much more than the law exacts of him. Nor can you be sure that 
he is a good man, for a good man will do many acts and abstain 
from many, the omission or commission of which is not punishable 
in the courts of the realm. He may, for all you know, be another 
Shylock, who will have his "pound of flesh ,, out of every debtor 
bound to him by contract, regardless of "equity" (which is the 
intention of the legislator) and mercy (which is the attribute of 
God). Again, a good man is good within and without, in heart 
and in act; but your legally just man, so far as his justice is re- 
ferred to the law of the state, is good in overt act only. De internis 
non judical praetor, the civil judge is not cognizant of purely 
inward dispositions. 

For legal justice to be any way commensurate with all goodness, 
it must be referred to the law of God, natural (in the Command- 
ments) and revealed (in Christ). In this way a drunkard is not 
legally just, because he breaks the Sixth, or whatever Command- 
ment we take to include all temperance; nor a Catholic who 
neglects Sunday Mass, because he disregards the precept of Christ 
to hear the Church (Matt, xviii, 17). On the other hand, for 
their fulfilment of the law of God, the parents of the Baptist, 
Zachary and Elizabeth, are pronounced legally just; they were 
both just before God, walking in all the commandments of the Lord 
without blame (Luke i, 6). When a sinner is pardoned he is said 
to be justified; that is, after having broken the law and failed in 
legal justice, he is reinstated as though he had not broken it, in 
the condition of the just who have observed the law. Legal justice, 
thus understood, includes the exercise of all the virtues, so far 
as their acts are commanded by God. It is an ample virtue, or rather 
the virtue of virtues, meaning an habitual avoidance of whatever 
displeases God, at least of all that offends Him mortally. It is a 



OF JUSTICE 



49 



permanent practical horror of mortal sin. That is the primary and 
essential requisite for saving your soul. He is not in a state of 
salvation at all, he is on the road to hell, who does not possess in 
some degree this general virtue of legal justice. To speak in the 
words of the Psalm (cviii), he is not written with the just. 

This general virtue, however, can not be that justice which 
counts for one of the four cardinal virtues ; for it is inclusive 
of the other three. You can not divide in this way — Maryland, 
America, New York and Connecticut. We must look for justice 
in some particular form, in which it shall be distinct from other 
virtues. So to distinguish it, let us return to our definition of 
justice. Justice we defined to be the habit of constantly and regu- 
larly rendering to other intelligent and rational beings about us each 
his own. The first of "intelligent and rational beings about us" is 
God ; and God claims as "his own" our entire obedience to His law ; 
thus our every sin is a sin against justice in our relation with our 
Creator; and once more, justice becomes a universal virtue. We 
will deal with this difficulty when we come to the virtue of re- 
ligion. For the present, not considering religion, nor the angels, 
whose rights we can not infringe, we will define justice in relation 
to those with whom we are visibly associated on earth. Justice then 
is the habit of rendering to our fellowmen each his own. Thus 
defined, justice is of two sorts, distributive and corrective, to fol- 
low the Aristotelian division. Distributive justice resides in the 
rulers of a commonwealth, and involves the awarding of rewards 
and punishments to the members of the commonwealth according 
to their several deserts. When 

The page killed the boar, 
The peer had the gloire, 



S o THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

that was an offense against distributive justice, unless we are to 
suppose the page to be indistinguishable from his master. We 
call it "favoritism" when the worthy are passed over, and the less 
worthy sought out and decorated. Favoritism is a violation of dis- 
tributive justice. When it comes to the awarding of punishments, 
distributive justice takes the name of retributive justice. And this 
is a very common meaning of the term "justice." For this the 
multitudes clamoured, rightly or wrongly, when they filled the pre- 
cincts of the Palace of Whitehall in the days of Charles I, crying 
"Justice! Justice!" for the head of Strafford. In this signification 
an English or Irish gentleman signs himself J. P. (Justice of the 
Peace). 

Still we have not yet reached the innermost core of the virtue 
of justice. If a deserving British officer is not knighted or made a 
peer, he can not strictly be said to have been kept out of his 
own, for peerage or knighthood never have been his. He had 
a claim that the honour should be made his, and given him, which 
claim is called by Roman lawyers a jus ad rem, a right to the thing ; 
but as the honour never became his, he had not in it a jus in re, a 
right of ownership in the thing. His claim remaining unsatisfied, 
the rulers of the State remain bound to attend to it; but they owe 
him no 'restitution, for the simple reason that what a man never 
has had can not be restored to him. We shall see presently that 
a violation of strict justice always involves restitution. Still less 
can a rogue unhanged complain that he has been wronged because 
he has not come to his own — a halter. He is little likely to com- 
plain of that; and the maxim holds, volenti non fit injuria, no 
wrong is done to a willing man. Distributive justice then, and re- 
tributive justice, though it is part of the cardinal virtue, still is 
not justice in the strictest sense of the term. 



OF JUSTICE 



51 



To find that sense verified we must fall back upon what Aristotle 
calls corrective justice, and Catholic divines generally commutative 
justice. The variation of terminology is due to a clerical error in 
a translation of Aristotle used in the thirteenth century. We will 
keep to the true Aristotelian phrase, corrective justice; and that we 
will subdivide at our own convenience into commutative and res- 
titutive. In corrective justice, and its two species just enumer- 
ated, we shall find the genuine idea of justice. The office of cor- 
rective justice is to regulate and rectify men's dealings with fellow- 
men, so that every man shall have what is properly his own, what 
is part or appanage of himself; shall keep it, or shall have it given 
back to him, if it has been wrongfully taken away. A man is well- 
nigh beyond instruction, who tells you that he does not know 
what his own means. However, we may point out to such a man 
that a thing may be his own in two ways : it may be his own legally, 
and it may be his own by right; and consequently it may be his 
own legally and by right, or legally, but not by right, or by right, 
but not legally. A thing is a man's own legally when the courts 
of his country will support his possession of it. A thing is a 
man's own by right when the civil courts ought to support him 
in possession of it,* so far as the matter lies within their com- 



*"A thing is a man's own by right, when the civil courts ought to sup- 
port him in possession of it." It may further be demanded why they ought. 
I reply, first, because the thing is necessary to the man's existence and indi- 
vidual well-being. Secondly, because it is needed to enable him to discharge 
his social function in the commonwealth. Thirdly, because he is established 
in that possession by the will of God. Something in the same way, a gar- 
den flower requires this or that to grow up as a flower at all. Secondly, it 
requires this or that in order, in its proper place, to contribute to the gen- 
eral beauty of the garden. Thirdly, the gardener wills it to have these 
particular advantages for its purposes above named. It must be added that 
many rights are vague and indeterminate by nature, and must be deter- 
mined and particularly fixed by the civil law of the State. For further 
study of this difficult subject of rights the reader is referred to my Political 
and Moral Essays; Moral Philosophy. 



52 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

petence. The distinction between what the civil courts will and 
what they ought to support is founded on the assumption that not 
all law, nor all administration of law, is good; evil administration 
is conceivable, and evil ought not to be ; an assumption which any 
and every party readily enough makes, when itself has the misfor- 
tune to lose the upper hand in the conduct of public affairs. What 
is a man's own makes a sort of circle about himself. When men 
live ''cheek by jowl/' as they must in human society, these circles 
intersect; and it is important that they should intersect peaceably, 
on a good mutual understanding, without violent collision and 
fracture. This is secured by one neighbour resigning part of what 
was his own in favour of another, on condition of the neighbour so 
benefited making a reciprocal resignation. (Hence a system of 
voluntary exchange, formulated by the Roman lawyers as "I give 
on condition that you give," "I do on condition that you do," 
do ut des, facio ut facias. Over these voluntary exchanges com- 
mutative justice presides. Commutative justice is justice in buy- 
ing and selling, justice in all relations of debtor and creditor, jus- 
tice between workman and employer, justice in the fulfilment of 
every valid contract. When your neighbour makes over to you 
something of what was his own, something of his material sub- 
stance or something of his personal labour, he does so on the ex- 
press understanding that you make over something of your own 
in return. The carrying out of this is an act of the virtue of 
justice, strictly so-called, namely, commutative justice. Your 
neighbour, however, may, and frequently will, make over to you 
something of his own without covenanting for a return on your 
part; he is then said to give. Giving does not belong to justice 
but to some further virtue, as liberality or charity. Unhap- 
pily, men will frequently take what is not given them. This is 



OF JUSTICE 53 

theft or robbery, according as it be done by stealth or with open 
violence. Theft and robbery are punished in the criminal courts 
of the land. To the action of those courts we have referred under 
the head of retributive justice. Such justice is dispensed on public, 
not on private grounds; for the benefit of the commonwealth, not 
for the satisfaction of the individual sufferer. It is no satisfac- 
tion to me that the man who has stolen my cheese has got a fort- 
night in prison. I am not compensated by his imprisonment. I 
want my cheese back. In taking away mine without my consent 
the thief, all unconsciously, made a contract with me, what divines 
call "an involuntary contract." Quite involuntarily on my part, he 
became possessed of the cheese; that was the first half of the con- 
tract. The second half consists in his making restitution to me of 
the cheese, or of its equivalent, voluntarily, if he will (and such resti- 
tution is a constituent element in his repentance) ; but otherwise, 
if he will not, he must be forced involuntarily to restore. Presiding 
over these "involuntary contracts" is restitutive justice, also part 
of justice strictly so called. Whenever you sin against strict justice 
you are bound to restitution. 



THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 



VIII. JUSTICE AND CHARITY 



It is impossible to exaggerate the importance to the animal 
body of the bony framework called the skeleton. Nevertheless a 
mere skeleton neither lives nor moves. To scientific thought our 
usual emblem of Death as a walking skeleton is a ludicrous absurd- 
ity. However shall bones double one upon the other otherwise 
than by the contraction of muscles? Justice is the solid skeleton 
of human society. No society can work without justice. But 
again, no society can work on principles of justice alone. |^The 
muscle, the covering flesh of human society, is charity] But charity, 
it will be said, is a theological virtue, supernatural and infused ; and 
we are not treating of such virtues at present, only of natural vir- 
tues acquired by frequent acts, exercise and practice. Still we can 
not wholly ignore the supernatural. The supernatural is given us 
to be the guide of the natural, grace the motive power of nature ; 
nature should not be destroyed, but should be subordinate to and 
commanded by grace, and execute the behests of the spirit. We 
are not ignoring the supernatural; nevertheless, for the present, 
we prescind from it. And that we do in this instance the more 
readily because there is such a thing as natural charity, friendship 
and friendliness between man and man, mutual good feeling and 
good will, sympathy, benevolence and kindness. Aristotle, the 
panegyrist of justice, was so alive to this fact that he wrote: 
"Where justice is, there is further need of friendship; but where 
friendship is, there is no need of justice." A man needs no justice 
in his dealing with himself; he is tender enough of himself and 
his own. But a friend is a sort of second self. "Yes," you will 
say, "but I like my first self best." Not in all things, if you are a 



JUSTICE AND CHARITY 



55 



true friend. A man will give his very life for his friend. By 
"charity" I mean here, not exactly friendship, for friends must be 
few, but friendliness, as it were friend-like-ness, some approach to 
friendship, extending in a greater or less degree to all the men 
you have dealings with. Friendship and friendliness, or natural 
charity, grow from a common stock, love. Man is happily prone, 
under favourable conditions, to make man his fellow and love him. 
An English philosopher has said that the natural instinct of man 
meeting man for the first time would be to regard him as a rival, 
and either kill him or make a slave of him. So it might be, if man 
grew up to man's estate in perfect solitude, like pearls in separate 
shells, as the said philosopher (Hobbes) was apt tacitly to assume 
and argue accordingly. But man is born of man and woman, 
and grows up among brothers and sisters and playmates ; he 
springs of love, and is reared in love — not without admixture of 
hatred and jealousy, for there is no pure good in this world. The 
consequence of friendliness is that men are apt at times to give, 
and not always to bargain; sometimes to act on charity, and not 
insist upon justice. A friend sends a present of a haunch of venison 
for your wedding day. What an oddity you would take him for 
if he served you with a butcher's bill next week ! But, it may be 
contended, he expects similar presents himself from you in sea- 
son. Not if he is rich, and you are poor. But at least he expects 
gratitude, that is, some sort of return. But not a specific return. 
Justice is always specific, keeps books, sends in accounts and bills, 
this for that, the two being taken as equivalents in money value. 
Gratitude goes not into bills. Nevertheless, because friendship is 
returned, and in a manner repaid by friendship, St. Thomas puts 
down liberality, and gratitude, and "the friendliness that is called 
affability," as so many "potential" parts of justice; that is, they 



56 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

rank under justice, not strictly so called, but in a loose and wide 
sense of the term, as having certain affinities with justice. My own ! 
my own ! one thing that is my own is my heart to give away. Life 
would not be worth living without love. As the heart is given, 
other gifts will follow. Every gift is an abatement of strict justice. 
Such is charity. 

Three points our Saviour urges in the Gospel with especial in- 
sistence — faith in His person and mission, watchfulness for His 
second coming, and charity, or love, for one another. And this 
charity He would have to take the shape of abatement of the rights 
which in strict justice we have against one another. Shylock, 
clamouring for his pound of flesh, is an eminently anti-Christian 
character. Christ has put this lesson into the Lord's Prayer: 
Forgive us our trespasses, is, more literally, Forgive us our 
debts as we forgive our debtors (Matt. vi. 12). And if any man 
will go to law with thce } and take away thy coat, let him have thy 
cloak also (Matt, v, 40). In St. Matthew (xviii, 21-35) * s the 
parable of the servant who owed his lord ten thousand talents, or 
something like eight million dollars, an impossible sum to pay, 
was released of the debt, and therefrom proceeded to throttle his 
fellow-servant for a twenty-dollar debt ; for which insistence on his 
right — for the twenty dollars were really due in strict justice — his 
lord handed the implacable creditor over to the torturers till he 
paid the last farthing of his own huge liabilities, which he never 
could meet for all eternity. Certainly it is well at times to insist 
upon one's just rights, but it is also well at times — oftener, perhaps, 
than we think — to abate them. The parable is the condemnation of 
the hard man, who will never upon any consideration abate one 
jot or tittle of what his neighbour in strict justice owes him. And 



JUSTICE AND CHARITY 57 

this applies not only to money, but to honour, precedence, deference, 
and all things that men prize. 

A hard bargain may be not merely uncharitable, but positively 
unjust. Such a bargain is that between employer and employee, 
when the former engrosses all the working strength of the latter, 
and pays him in return not enough to live upon "in frugal comfort," 
as Leo XIII teaches in his Encyclical of May, 1891, on the "Con- 
dition of Labour/' On the other hand, the employer has a right 
to all that labour, care, attention, diligence and accuracy of work 
for which he pays a just wage — a debt of justice often ignored by 
workmen. Justice suffers, and has it edges knocked off, where it 
is not covered by charity. In charity the employer will do more 
than he is legally bound for his employees. In charity they will 
on occasion do more than they are legally bound for him. When 
this notion of charity is spurned, and capital and labour behave 
as two independent, unfriendly powers, each jealous of the other, 
each striving to wring the utmost concession that the law will allow 
from the other, there must be acts of injustice done on both sides. 
The Lord's Prayer has much to tell us if we will think it over in 
remedy of the ills of life. 

It should be understood that charity is not always optional, not 
always mere matter of counsel, but, like justice, charity also some- 
times imposes an obligation under sin. You are bound under sin 
to help your neighbour when he is in distress and is unable to help 
himself out of it, while you being close at hand can help him with- 
out yourself falling into the like distress. Thus you would be 
bound under sin to take into your house, or otherwise provide for a 
beggar whom you found frozen at your door. You are bound 
to rescue a drowning man, if you can get him out without notable 
risk to your own life. Charity binds us in oar neighbour's need in 



S 8 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

the absence of any special contract to stand by him. Where there 
is such special contract the obligation is no longer of charity, but 
of justice. The soldier has contracted, and is bound in justice, to 
venture his life at the word of command in battle. The parish 
priest is bound in justice, even at the risk of infection, to admin- 
ister the last Sacraments to a dying sinner in his parish; whereas 
a stranger priest passing that way would at most be bound only 
in charity. I am fain to add, he is not much of a priest if he 
stands on his points in such an occasion. You are also bound in 
justice to prevent your neighbour taking harm directly in conse- 
quence of your action. Thus, if you have even accidentally pushed 
a child into deep water, you are bound to get him out if you can ; 
much more if you have done it on purpose. The difference between 
an obligation in justice and an obligation in charity is of great 
practical import in casuistry, inasmuch as a neglected obligation 
in justice involves reparation and restitution, where the matter 
admits of restitution, but no restitution is due for neglect of what 
you were bound to do in charity. Therefore, a sin against justice 
is called a peccatum caudatum, a sin with a tail, the tail being 
the burden of having to restore. As we have seen, restitution is 
the second half of the involuntary contract. How many sins, tail 
and all, how many deeds of wrong with the wrong never made 
good, must come under the final cognizance of the Sovereign Judge ! 
It is no rare experience to encounter pious people who are 
strangely neglectful of their obligations in justice — leave their 
tradesmen's bills unpaid, with the result that other customers, who 
do pay, pay for them also in the increased price — fail to discharge 
duties which they are salaried to perform — have young children 
under their wardship and custody, and take no pains even to know 
how they are going on. These omissions proceed from no deliberate 



JUSTICE AND CHARITY 



59 



contempt of justice ; they may involve no grievous sin ; thoughtless- 
ness may be pleaded in palliation of them, but thoughtlessness is 
a fool's excuse. A healthy conscience is extremely sensitive to 
claims of neighbours, claims in decency and courtesy, claims in 
charity, and above all, claims in justice. Of one of the greatest of 
the saints, Scripture is satisfied with informing us truly that he 
was a just man. ! Justice is the backbone of charity. If you are 
in superiority, and find it not in your nature to be a very loving 
father to those under you, be at least just to them. The saying 
is well known in England of the schoolboy who in boyish language 
described his headmaster as "a beast/' then added on reflection, 
"but he is a just beast." The "just beast" became Archbishop of 
Canterbury, and in that high station well maintained his character 
for justice. 

As a man has a right to life, limb, and property, the violation of 
which right is a sin against justice and calls for restitution, so 
equally has he right to honour and respect and deferential treatment 
according to his rank from those about him, be they his equals or 
even his superiors. To browbeat a man, to address him in abusive 
or scornful language, and generally to insult him, is not merely 
uncharitable, it is downright injustice, and calls for restitution in 
the shape of an apology, howbeit the injured person, following our 
Lord's counsel, will often do well to waive his claim and forgive 
freely. Every individual man, likewise every corporate body, has 
a right also to character and reputation. Thou shalt not bear false 
zvitness against thy neighbour is a commandment often forgotten 
when corporate bodies or societies come under discussion. Yet 
the members of such societies are more jealous of the reputation 
of the body than of their own individual good name. A man who 
does evil in public flings away his reputation ; he has no character 



60 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

left to lose. A man who has done evil to his neighbour in secret, 
and is in a way to do more, also forfeits his reputation to the extent 
of such denunciation as is necessary for the prevention of his fur- 
ther injury or harming others. Under this exception a man has a 
right to a good character so long as he behaves well in public. To 
take such character away is a sin against justice. If the defamation 
be false, it is called "calumny"; where it is true it is "detraction." 
Both calumny and detraction call for restitution of good name; 
but where the story is true, obviously such restitution is hardly 
possible. You can not mend broken glass. You must not lie to 
undo a wrong. Still less must you do a wrong by spreading lying 
reports detrimental to the character of another ; those you are bound 
to contradict if you yourself are the author of them, in justice; if 
you are not the author, in charity. Altogether it may save much 
subsequent distress of mind to be always wary of one's words in 
speaking of the absent, particularly if they be persons whom you 
dislike. 

Concerning vengeance, or revenge, I find that natural tempera- 
ments differ curiously on this point. Some are more prone to 
revenge an insult, others rather cry for vengeance on cruelty. 
The Christian is taught not to seek vengeance for a private wrong, 
as such. We may seek restitution, or compensation, but that is 
not vengeance. It is not vengeance, it is only the exaction of the 
fulfilment of (an involuntary) contract, if I compel him who has 
robbed me of property to the extent of five hundred dollars to pay 
me in a note to that amount. It would be vengeance were I to 
horsewhip him for it. That the law will not allow. In civilized 
countries the law has gradually by slow degrees assumed to itself 
the function of avenging wrong done by one private citizen to 
another. The law punishes wrong-doers on public grounds, by way 



JUSTICE AND CHARITY 61 

of public example, as a deterrent. In that light I do well to bring 
the man who has injured me to public justice, not exactly because 
he has injured me (I forgive him that), but reipublicae causa, that 
he may not go on injuring others, This is the sense of the text, 
Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord (Deut. xxii, 35; Rom. xii, 19). 
The retribution meted out by the criminal law of the State is the 
vengeance of the Lord, whose minister the civil magistrate is. 
He beareth not the sword in vain, for he is God's minister, doing 
justice unto anger upon him that doth ill (Rom. xiii, 4). 

An old writer has said: "It is praiseworthy to be patient under 
one's own wrongs, but the height of impiety to dissemble injuries 
done to God." We feel a righteous indignation at injuries done to 
the Church, but commonly we must forego vengeance; for in these 
days no public authority is concerned to avenge such wrongs, and 
we must not take the business into private hands. Even under 
injuries done to Himself Our Lord teaches us patience. His Apostles 
were to be as sheep in the midst of wolves (Matt, x, 16). When 
James and John would have called down fire from heaven upon the 
Samaritan town that shut its gates to their Master, He restrained 
them with the words, Ye know not of what spirit ye are 
(Lukeix, 55). 



62 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 



IX. THE VIRTUE OF RELIGION 

The one Being with whom we have relation for everything that 
we are, upon whom all that is in us is dependent, who has rights 
over us without limitation, and to whom we are bound in justice 
by the most stringent and constraining ties, is God our Creator. 
We owe Him in justice, and He claims of us in strict right, the 
perfect observance of His law; so that, as we have seen already, 
every sin against the law of God is a violation of justice in the 
divine regard, and perfect justice toward God would imply the 
full observance of that law, and the exercise of all the virtues in 
so far as enjoined by that law. One thing, however, God particu- 
larly insists on: that is the recognition of this our absolute de- 
pendence upon Him, and the signification of our sense of depend- 
ence by a sensible and external sign. This recognition and sensible 
signification of the same is called worship. Justice toward God is 
all summed up and specialized in the payment of religious worship. 
Worship, indeed, is not the observance of the whole law of God; 
but it is at least a recognition that we ought to observe it. Recog- 
nition of the debt is the first step to payment. The worship of God 
then is the matter of a special virtue of justice toward God, which 
is called the virtue of religion. 

The word religion comes from the Latin. The Romans them- 
selves disputed about the derivation of the word. Some derived 
it from religens, a word opposed to negligens, both coming from 
lego (I pick up). The negligent man is he who picks up nothing; 
while the religious man is he who picks up again and again, a 
scrupulous, conscientious, careful man, answering to the prophet's 
prescription, to walk solicitously with thy God (Mich, vi, 8). 



THE VIRTUE OF RELIGION 63 

Others preferred the derivation from religare (to bind again), con- 
sidering that religion binds men to God. Whichever explanation 
be right, both appeal to right principles. Religion is a recognition 
of the tie that binds us to God. Religion does make us careful 
to walk reverently and do obeisance in the presence of Majesty Di- 
vine. The irreligious man revels in a mistaken freedom; he is 
frequently a loose and reckless liver. So much for etymology. 

We have put the virtue of religion under justice. Some might 
wish it counted a theological virtue, as having relation immedi- 
ately with God. Faith, no doubt, is exercised in the Christian ex- 
ercise of religion, and hope, too; still religion can not be classified 
with faith, hope and charity, for this, among other reasons, that the 
theological virtues belong to the supernatural order, whereas re- 
ligion is a virtue of the natural order. That is to say, faith (and 
say the like of hope and charity) refers us to God as known in 
Christ, and is exercised by us in our capacity of Christians, borne 
up by the grace of Christ; whereas religion refers us to God in 
Himself as God, and to God as our Creator and Lord, which He is 
even apart from the Incarnation, and is a virtue which, man as man, 
in the order of reason and natural propriety, is bound to exercise. 
Religion then is not a theological virtue, because it is a virtue 
proper to human nature as such. It may be added that God is 
known immediately by us on earth only through revelation; in 
the order of nature, away from revelation, He is known mediately 
by process of reasoning. In the light of that mediate knowledge 
religion, as a natural virtue, worships Him. 

Worship, to be acceptable, must come from the heart. It 
should be the outpouring of a heart docile and submissive to God. 
Our Lord condemned the worship of the Pharisees and of the 
Jewish priests, with their multitudinous observances, because their 



64 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

hearts were far from Him whom they honored with their lips. 
The worship of an insincere heart is called formalism. Formalism, 
to be sure, is an evil thing, but that does not make forms, rites and 
ceremonies in religious worship, evil things, any more than food 
becomes evil by the abuse of food turning to indigestion. Nor 
is it to any purpose to allege that rites and ceremonies are of no 
use to God. Of course they are of no use to God. The whole of 
creation put together is not of the slightest use to God. When we 
have done all that we are commanded to do, God bids us say we 
are unprofitable servants (Luke xvii, 10). God has nothing to gain 
by us. His aims are fixed wholly beyond the category of the useful. 
He looks for honour, quite a different thing from utility. He need 
not have created either men or angels ; but having created them, 
He looks to their paying Him honour. 

But why not, to use a phrase once famous, "worship mostly of 
the silent sort"? Because we are men, and silence on matters that 
we are interested in is against our nature. What lover of country 
lanes in summer is silent in praise of flowers? Our work will not 
be mostly of the silent sort if we really care about religion. Be- 
sides, as philosophers are now discovering, religion originally 
springs out of the social side of human nature. Once found, God 
may be prayed to in solitude, but He is first found in company. 
In the order of nature you have first the congregation, then the 
priest and the altar, expressive of the common desire to adore 
some power above the community, to whom the community owes 
allegiance, the worship of whom paid by all in common is the 
cement of that society. In the primitive commonwealth there was 
one common worship. And to this day unity of worship is the 
ideal for a commonwealth, for lack of attainment of which ideal 
we citizens of modern states have many lamentable disputes about 



THE VIRTUE OF RELIGION 65 

education. Religion, then, is not a growth of solitude* but of society 
It is a function of social man. But a social function can not be car- 
ried on in silence. I have never attended a meeting of the Society 
of Friends ; but the members of that society, I understand, are few 
and select. Their procedure can not make a rule for the many. 
A man may sing by himself, and he may pray by himself, and 
should often do so. Nevertheless, nearly all great musical com- 
positions involve the harmony of many voices and instruments > 
and nearly all religions have their public ritual, even though it be 
of the simplest, as in the case of Mohamedanism and Puritanism, 
with regard to which it may be debated whether their religion or 
their unreligiousness it is that has made their ritual so bald and 
plain. Yet even the Mohamedan is publicly called to frequent 
prayer; while the Puritan, though his chief interest lay in the ser- 
mon, spent hours in congregational singing of psalms. 

In the Psalms, sun, moon, stars and light, and all the irrational 
creation, are invited to praise God. And so they do, simply by 
being what they are, manifestations of God's power, wisdom and 
goodness. But the starry heavens are all unconscious of the praise 
that they render to God. Man is their mouthpiece. In his mind 
their unconscious witness to their Creator passes into consciousness. 
Man is the high priest of the material creation. He raises inferior 
things to the religious order. The lower animals he sacrifices to 
God, or used to do, while God was pleased to accept such victims. 
The great sacrifice of the New Law is offered from the fruits of 
the earth, the fruit of the vineyard and the cornfield. Man lays gold 
and silver plate and jewels, when he has them, upon the altar. He 
enshrines the altar in an edifice so majestic and glorious, that even 
when defaced and profaned a king's palace looks mean and vulgar 
by the side of it. These are the outward splendours of religion: 



66 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

thus matter worships God. But the most perfect work among 
visible and material things is not any handiwork of man; it is a 
work of God's own formation, the body of man. "With my body 
I thee worship/' says bridegroom to bride in the English marriage 
service. "With my body I thee worship/' in the higher and strictly 
religious sense of the word worship, every man should say to his 
Creator. Bowings, genuflections, processions, choral singing, 
"making a cheerful noise with psalms" — all things that infidels 
rail at — are part of the reasonable service (Rom. xii, i) that 
man pays with his body to God. I need not say how much this 
service is enhanced, when the body is what the body of a Chris- 
tian ever should be, holy, well-pleasing to God, the living temple 
of the Holy Ghost, a member of Christ (Rom. ib.; I Cor. vi, 15, 19). 
The same men who object to bodily adoration and material ad- 
juncts to religion also make light of Sacraments. 

The method of this bodily homage should never be left to indi- 
vidual caprice. No man has any business to be his own master 
of ceremonies. "Honour the Deity after the manner of your ances- 
tors," was a maxim with the Greeks. It is a sound rule, wherever 
it does not involve idolatrous rites. Where God has not positively 
signified the rites and ceremonies, whereby He wishes to be 
worshiped, as He once did through Moses, and does now through 
the Catholic Church, the approved custom of the country supplies 
a rule from which the individual worshiper should not notably 
deviate. In dealing with religion we must never forget that there 
is such a thing as religious mania, and that religious emotion, un- 
controlled, especially when it seizes upon a multitude, is apt tc 
issue in practices which are not of the spirit of God, practices in 
flagrant violation of morality and His commandments. A well- 
ordered public ritual checks these excesses. 



THE VIRTUE OF RELIGION 67 

^Religion being a virtue, and virtue being a habit, and a habit 
being formed by repetition of acts, and that formation going on 
most readily when nature is most plastic, as it is in childhood and 
youth, it should be a main aim of the educator to form his charge 
to the virtue of religion. \ To that end they must pray regularly 
in private, and often take part — not merely be lookers on, but take 
part in — the public prayers and ceremonies of Holy Church. And 
here let us get rid of a delusion which our parliamentary orators 
on the education question seem often to labour under, the idea that 
religion is a "lesson," and may be classified as such with geography ; 
that it is forsooth one of the subjects of a timetable. It is nothing of 
the kind. I grant you religious doctrine is a lesson; but religious 
doctrine is not religion, albeit religion can not stand without doc- 
trine. Men thoroughly irreligious have still been doctors in the- 
ology, masters of religious doctrine. Many boys love their re- 
ligion, and yet find the lesson in religious doctrine tedious. /^Religion 
is a discipline of the whole man, not of the intellect only; it con- 
verts the whole being to the worship of Godi Religion is instilled 
by Sacraments, by Confession and Communion, by Mass, Rosary 
and Benediction, by holy images and the company of religious peo- 
ple, not by Catechism alone. Place a boy in surroundings where 
these things are not; you will not save his religion by giving him 
Catechism to learn and the Bible to read for two hours a day. So 
much for the acquirement of the virtue of religion, the first point 
in the cycle of true education, indeed the one thing necessary to be 
educated in at all. 

Debts unpaid, and consequently due in justice to tradesmen and 
others, trouble the conscience of a right-minded man. Some even 
are found who will concern themselves to pay the debts of their 
predecessors, whose fortunes they have inherited. Thus good 



68 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

Queen Mary impoverished herself in paying the debts of Henry 
VIII and Edward VI. Religious duties neglected are debts un- 
paid to God. We are bound in justice to worship God at proper 
intervals. The Church's precept of Sunday Mass is no mere arbi- 
trary imposition. It determines for us a precept of natural law. 
It fixes a limit beyond which we must not go without doing an act 
of religion. When Mass is out of our reach, the obligation still 
rests upon us at certain proper times to pray. We must pray with 
sufficient frequency to be enabled to resist temptation, and tempta- 
tion for many of us is both frequent and strong. That is how it 
comes to be unsafe to omit to pray morning and evening. Hence 
the tradition of morning and evening prayers. 

Man is differentiated from the lower animals by sense of re- 
ligion and belief in God. Our dumb servants and pets have not 
the least inkling of a God. They enter in some sort into our sor- 
rows, never into our prayers. One has but to observe their de- 
meanor in church or at prayer time to see how utterly destitute 
they are of religious awe and reverence. You train them to keep 
quiet for the time, but so you could if you wanted the time for read- 
ing and looking over accounts. They are quiet simply out of com- 
plaisance to their human master. He stands to them in place of 
God. It is said that animals see ghosts; even if they did, that 
would not argue any apprehension of the divine. Consequently, 
when a man abandons all religion, he divests himself of a badge 
of humanity, and steps down into the order of brutes. A high and 
spiritual religion marks a high civilization. The decay of religion 
means the degradation of humanity. Of this fact the enemies of 
religion are continually furnishing evidence by the brutality of their 
language, and the brutality of their behavior. Homer said well of 
old, "All men need gods" (Odyssey III, 48). And David has said 
much better, My soul hath thirsted after the strong living God 
(Ps. x, 41). 



TRUTHFULNESS, GRATITUDE, OBEDIENCE 69 



X. TRUTHFULNESS, GRATITUDE, OBEDIENCE 

"Because man is a social animal, one man naturally owes another 
that without which human society could not go on. But men could 
not live with one another, if they did not believe one another 
as declaring the truth to one another. And, therefore, the virtue 
of truthfulness in some way hinges upon the notion of a thing 
due" (St. Thomas). Thus truthfulness comes to be classified 
under justice. Not that it is a part of justice strictly so-called. 
Ordinarily, the knowledge in my mind is not the property of my 
neighbour, it is not his by right; I am not legally bound to make 
it over to him ; and if, when he asks for it, I deal out to him some- 
thing else, something contrary even to that knowledge, I do not 
thereby do him, strictly, an injury and wrong, nor do I owe him 
afterwards any restitution. Thus if a person asks me my opinion 
on the Tariff Question, and I tell him that I am a Free Trader, 
whereas really I am a partisan of Tariff Reform, I tell an untruth, 
I lie, I commit a sin, but I have not exactly wronged my inquirer. 
I am not bound to write to him next day and avow my Protectionist 
sympathies, by way of restitution. A simple lie is not a sin against 
strict justice. Nay, a simple lie, whatever Protestants may think 
to the contrary, is never a mortal sin; you will not go to hell 
for that; but unless you repent and do penance, you will go to 
purgatory, for it. This is quite enough deterrent to a Catholic, con- 
joined with the fact of the sinfulness of the lie, for venial sin after 
all is sin ; and as Ecclesiasticus, xv, says : God hath not given permis- 
sion to every man to sin. By a "simple lie," I mean, first, a lie which 
is not against religion and the honour of God, as is the lie when 



70 



THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 



a Catholic denies his being a Catholic, which is a mortal sin; 
secondly, a lie which does no hurt to our neighbour in point of life, 
limb, property, or reputation. A lie which does serious hurt to a 
neighbour in any of those respects is a mortal sin against justice, 
and entails restitution. Somebody is said once to have walked into 
a shop where they sold sausages and laid six dead cats on the 
counter, with the words, "There are six of them; I'll bring you 
the remaining half-dozen to-morrow." This when the shop was 
full of customers. No doubt it was a joke, and no customer took 
it seriously. But seriously to imply by word or gesture, and make 
it believed, that a respectable poor butcher makes his sausages 
out of cats, would be more than a simple lie; it would be a lie 
edged with a barb of injustice, for which, as for any other strict 
injustice, restitution would be due. 

However, we have not here to do with calumny, but simply with 
the habit of speaking or not speaking the truth, and we will confine 
our treatment of it, as the early moralists confined theirs, to the 
matter of speaking of one's self, one's own personal advantages and 
exploits. A child tells ycu of itself, and there are grown up people 
who will tell you of themselves, their doings, and their difficulties, 
with all the simplicity and effusiveness of a child. Their candour is 
charming, as being utterly removed from vanity. There is also 
an offensive and importunate way of forcing your past adventures, 
or present views, upon your neighbour's notice. A really vain 
person does not usually speak openly at length, but drops little 
sagacious, even self-depreciatory hints, all calculated to heighten 
your opinion of the speaker, or force from you a compliment. 
Then there are those who are not vain, and seek not admiration 
for its own sake, but they are gainful and ambitious persons, greedy 
of emolument and advancement, and to this end they will lie down- 



TRUTHFULNESS, GRATITUDE, OBEDIEXCE 71 

right, cunningly, exaggerating their own value, and depreciating 
their neighbour's, with or without cause; detraction or calumny, 
neither comes amiss to them. This sort of people is odious before 
God and man. I hardly know any worse symptom of character 
than the habit of systematic lying for the furtherance of one's own 
ends. Henry VIII was a portentous liar and a typical bad man. A 
symptom is not necessarily in itself the worst element of the disease ; 
the evil lies in what it points to. There are worse sins than lying; 
but steady, reckless lying for the purpose of getting on in life is an 
index to much deep-seated moral evil. 

This pestilential type of liar must not be confounded with him 
whose statements are inexact through constitutional inaccuracy 
of mind; or, it may be, from exuberance of imagination and love 
of fun. The liar in jest, once his character is established, can not, 
I think, be called a liar at all; for when the mood is on him, and 
the matter is trivial enough to permit it, no one takes his exag- 
gerations or comical stories seriously. He can not be said to affirm 
anything; consequently he does not lie. He only suggests matter 
of inquiry, should any one think it worth his while to follow the 
subject up. One sole stipulation must be made with him, that his 
jests be never malicious. 

Lying is a mark of pride. Humility, as we shall see, is taking one's 
proper place in the eyes of God ; pride is assuming a rank that one has 
no right to, and consequently a false rank. / will ascend above the 
height of the clouds; I will be like the Most High (Isaias xiv, 14). 
Such was the aspiration of the first proud creature, Lucifer. There 
was falsehood in his claim; such was not his place, yet he would 
have it that it was. He began with a lie; upon a lying pretext he 
rebelled ; therefore, our Saviour calls him a liar and the father of 
lies (John viii, 44). The proud man is pretentious and unreal 



72 



THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 



in his makeup. What he is by nature and by the grace of God 
is not enough for him. He dotes upon an imaginary self. For 
that product of his imagination he claims place and position in 
the esteem of man, place and position beyond his proper due. His 
whole policy is based upon a fiction. Fiction and falsehood he 
loves; they are essential to the character that he plays. He dare 
not be himself, and let other people take him for no more than 
he is really worth. Pride is always founded upon a wrong view 
of self and of the situation. As we are often told, humility is 
truth. 

I can conceive this last proposition being denied. "No," 
it will be said, "both humility and pride are founded on untruth ; 
pride an untruth in the way of self-exaltation; humility an untruth 
in the way of self-depreciation. The humble man does not acknowl- 
edge his own merits. What shocking things the saints have said 
in the way of self-depreciation, but they are the worst of sinners, 
that they deserve to lie at the feet of Judas in hell/ 5 etc. If I 
plead on behalf of the saints that they at least believed what they 
said, and therefore told no lie, I shall be met — and I think justly 
met — with the rejoinder, that the proud man also believes in his 
own estimate of himself. I admit that he does. That is just the 
misery of his position. The arch liar lies to himself, and brings 
himself to believe himself. That is what Plato calls "the lie in 
the soul," the worst of all lies. Satan, I presume, thus lies even 
to himself. But though he believe in himself, not for that is his 
lying pride excusable. There is such a thing as culpable self- 
deception. As for what seems to us the exaggerated language of 
the saints, that is a matter admitting of much discussion. To 
discuss it at length would carry us from our subject. The key to 
the solution is this, that the saints see themselves, not in com- 



TRUTHFULNESS, GRATITUDE, OBEDIENCE 73 

parison with their fellowmen, but as they stand confronted with 
the ineffable holiness of God. Before that standard they are con- 
founded for their very least defects; and having an eye (like the 
publican in the Gospel) on their own misdoings and not (like the 
Pharisee) on the misdoings of their neighbours, they humble and 
abase themselves below all other men. 

s Another virtue, ranked under justice, and also in close connection 
with humility, is gratitude. I should advise anyone who was 
looking for an easy way up the mountain of holiness to try the 
path of gratitude, of perennial exuberant thankfulness to God, and 
to men as vehicles of the bounties of God. Every master loves 
a contented and grateful servant; so does the Best of Masters. 
One hearty Deo gratias caroled in the sunny air of enjoy- 
ment, or better still, heaved out of the depths of tribulation, 
sends Satan away in disgust, for he is an eternal malcontent, and 
the Alleluia, the song of praise to God, is no music in his ear. 
The grateful man has the humility to own himself not sufficient 
for himself, but needing the assistance of others ; and when he gets 
it, he does not take it as payment of his dues, or as anything that 
he had a right to, but as altogether beyond his claims and deserts. 
Obedience, if we take it to mean the fulfilment of a contract 
do ut facias, "I give you on condition of your doing for me," may 
come under justice strictly so called. If John has contracted with 
Andrew to do a piece of work under Andrew's direction for a 
money payment, he is bound in justice to do the work, as Andrew 
is similarly bound to pay him the money. Working under contract, 
however, is not the proper type of obedience. Obedience supposes 
superior and inferior, the latter fulfilling the former's command 
because this superior is the higher in the hierarchical order, and 
is in status the better man of the two. This idea of obedience is 



74 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

very repugnant to modern minds. Modern men very generally 
will not hear of status, only of contract. But let us turn to the 
Commandments. Let us hear the Church. The Church delivers 
to us the Fourth Commandment, which is the commandment of 
obedience, honour thy father and thy mother. The relation of 
parent and child is not one of contract, but of status. And it is 
the most fundamental of all human relations. Civil society is built 
up out of families. Consequently the disintegration of the family 
is the disruption of the State. Anarchists and socialists know that 
well, and loathe the one as they repudiate the other. Parents, un- 
skilful how to command, and children, scorning to obey, these are 
filling the world with socialists. A servant, or a workman, should 
be next thing to a son to his master or employer, and pay not 
merely the work and service contracted for under stipulation of 
wage, but likewise the "honour" that the Commandment speaks 
of, the deference and respect due from inferior to superior. One is 
laughed at for saying such a thing nowadays. That civil society 
is incurring the most serious peril from the decay of the old- 
fashioned virtues of reverence, obedience, purity, religion, no 
thoughtful man will deny. Honour thy father and thy mother that 
thou mayest be long-lived in the land (Exod. xx, 12). Con- 
versely, a society in which authority is flouted, and obedience is 
taken for a badge of dishonour, may well be shortlived. One good 
thing provided by the State, serves as some check on this evil. 
The State keeps up an army and a navy; and in army and navy 
that obedience to command and that deference to superiors, which 
have not been learned in the family, nor probably at school either, 
as schools go, are learned at last in the ranks or on shipboard. 
When army and navy become mutinous, the hour for the State's 
overthrow has struck. 



TRUTHFULNESS, GRATITUDE, OBEDIENCE 75 

Obedience keeps a man in his hierarchical order in the society 
to which he belongs, domestic, civil or religious. True obedience 
is constitutional obedience. Nothing so unconstitutional as to dis- 
obey lawful authority commanding within its constitutional province. 
Slavery is unconstitutional, happily, in modern times. Tyranny 
is unconstitutional. Constitutional obedience is an honour to the 
man who pays it, no less than constitutional authority in compe- 
tent hands is an honour to him who wields it. It is an honour, be- 
cause it becomes him well and sits well on him as a proper fitting 
garment. It marks him for the right man in the right place. In 
the social hierarchy, duly constituted under God, all right places are 
honorable places. The whole is honorable, so are the parts. 

Obedience is for the young and for the poor, two classes of 
souls who are cherished with singular affection by the Most High. 
But even the wealthy full-grown man has to obey. He must 
obey the State, and he must obey the Church. The State, making 
laws on behalf of property and public decency, commands his ready 
homage, except perhaps for the burden of taxation. But the 
Church tries the obedience of the rich. Her fasts and abstinences 
get in the way of their elegant dinners. Her marriage laws do not 
suit their family arrangements. A rich man is more apt than a 
poor man to cavil at the authoritative pronouncements of the Holy 
See, partly because he is more highly educated and has leisure for 
speculation; partly because his judgment, fed with flattery — for 
everybody listens and many applaud when the rich man speaks — 
proudly goes its own way, impatient of control. The most divine 
of obediences is obedience to God's Church. 

At the Last Day, as a holy man has said, mankind will be divided 
on a simple principle. The obedient men will be ranged on one 
side of the Judge, the disobedient on the other. Like will be 



76 



THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 



assorted with like ; some with the arch-rebel, whose banner they 
have followed and whose motto they have repeated, / will not 
serve (Jerem. ii, 20) ; others shall be gathered to eternal rest in 
His bosom, who was obedient even unto the death of the cross 
(Phil, ii, 8). 



MAGNANIMITY AND HUMILITY. 77 



XI. MAGNANIMITY AND HUMILITY 

St. Thomas makes magnanimity and humility too distinct virtues ; 
the former he ranks under fortitude, the latter under temperance. 
These divisions of virtues are not wholly arbitrary: one division is 
more in accordance with the nature of things than another. Still 
there is some room left for difference here as elsewhere in a matter 
of classification. Much depends on the point of view from which 
the matter is studied. Now the aim of these addresses is practise 
rather than theory. In the conduct of those who are aiming at the 
practice of the virtue, magnanimity readily passes into pride, while 
the man who would be humble may become a sneak, a mean-spirited 
creature, from taking no account of magnanimity. We shall be 
more easily at once magnanimous and humble if we make of mag- 
nanimity and humility one two-sided virtue, a mean between two 
excesses, as fortitude itself is a two-sided virtue, checking two 
passions which go in two opposite ways, checking the passion of 
fear that it pass not into cowardice, checking again the passion of 
impetuosity lest it transgress into foolhardiness. The two-sided 
virtue of humble magnanimity and magnanimous humility may be 
called by the name of either of the constituents, as there is no one 
common name to include both. This arrangement will be found 
helpful in practise, and I flatter myself it is not so very deficient in 
point of theory. 

Magnanimity, in common parlance, is taken to be a certain 
generosity in ignoring petty annoyances (which is rather longa- 
nimity), as also in forgetting and forgiving, not taking advantage 
of your enemy when you have him in your power. But the con- 
ception of magnanimity originally laid down by Aristotle, and after- 



7 8 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

wards adopted, or perhaps we should rather say adapted, by St. 
Thomas, embraces a much wider field. The matter of magna- 
nimity is honor, which is also the matter of humility. The mag- 
nanimous man is defined to be "one who deems himself worthy of 
great honor, and is so worthy indeed/' being a thoroughly good 
man, exalted in virtue, and therefore deserving also to be exalted 
in honor, which is the meed of virtue. Such a man accepts high 
honors as his due, makes little account of small compliments, and, 
conscious of his own real inner worth, is unmoved by affronts and 
ignominies put upon him by persons who do not understand him 
and are incapable of measuring his greatness. (The mark of the 
magnanimous man is serenity^ A certain portly habit of body, if 
nature has so endowed him, becomes him well. Aristotle says of 
him, apparently having some particular person in mind, that "his 
gait is slow, his voice deep, his utterance grave and leisurely." 
Those are separable accidents, to be sure, but where they are 
present they are expressions of character. The magnanimous man 
then is worth a great deal, and takes himself for all that he is 
worth. He has received God's spirit — or something analogous in 
the natural order to the gift of the Holy Ghost — that he may 
know the things that are given him of God (II Cor. ii, 12). 
\We must not conceive the magnanimous man to be a god to him- 
self, wrapt up in the contemplation of his own excellences^ Being 
high in all virtue he is far from being wanting in the virtue of 
religion. He glorifies God for whatever he has, and owns it all to 
be the gift of God. His high thoughts turn not about himself, but 
about God. He is lofty minded for what he discerns in God 
primarily; and secondarily in himself by the sheer gift and grace 
of God. And here we have the defence of the magnanimous man 
meeting a grave impeachment preferred against him. It has been 






MAGNANIMITY AND HUMILITY 79 

said of him that he is certainly not conscious of any ideal that he can 
not reach — not at all the man to confess that when we have done 
all things we are still useless servants (Luke xvii, 10). This is 
said with some apparent reference to a sermon of Newman, "Dis- 
courses to Mixed Congregations/' on "The Religion of the Phari- 
see." The Pharisee is there presented as having an ideal and having 
come up to it, and consequently living in serene self-complacency. 
By this argument the magnanimous man would be a self-righteous 
Pharisee, far removed from the standard of Him who was meek and 
humble of heart (Matt, xi, 29). The accusation may be leveled with 
some justice against the pagan magnanimous man depicted in the 
pages of Aristotle. Aristotle thought of man in relation to man, 
not in relation to God, and described and classified his virtues ac- 
cordingly from a human, social standpoint. He saw no harm in a 
man who was much the superior of his fellows making the most of 
that superiority, and glorying in himself as of himself. St. Paul, 
better taught of God, thought otherwise (II Cor. iii, 5). Every- 
thing good in man comes from God ; and when it is all reckoned up, 
human goodness does not come to much in the sight of God. Shall 
man be justified in comparison with God? Lo, the stars are not 
pure in his sight; how much more is man rottenness, and the son of 
man a worm! (Job xxv, 4-6). True magnanimity, that is to say, 
the magnanimity that parts not company with humility, but coalesces 
with it in the unity of one virtue, bears honours gracefully, and insult 
unflinchingly, from a consciousness of internal worth. This is our 
glory, says St. Paul, the testimony of our conscience (II Cor. i, 
12). This internal worth, however, the magnanimous man refers 
to the source from whence it comes, and unto God he gives the 
glory. The secret of his marvelous virtue is his habit of practical 
discernment between the abyss of nothingness within himself and 



80 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

the high gifts, also within him, which come of the bounty of God. 
Magnanimity, and therefore also humility, imports grandeur and 
elevation of mind. The magnanimously humble man thinks a great 
deal of God, and not too much of man, whether of himself or of his 
neighbours. He is clear of the weakness of human respect. He is 
not afraid of men, least of all wicked men. In his sight the 
malignant is brought to nothing (Ps. xiv, 4). As Aristotle humor- 
ously puts it, "he is not the man to bolt and run away, swinging 
his arms." He harbors in his heart a certain noble scorn for the 
impertinence of aggressive wickedness and the pomp and pride of 
evil powers. He takes a trifle for a trifle, and a fool for a fool. He 
is not easily excited. He will meddle only with big things, and with 
little things as they bear on big things. Altogether, the magnani- 
mous man is a formidable antagonist to the powers of evil. When 
the official of a persecuting government said to St. Basil, "I never 
met a man so unmanageable as you arc," the saint replied, "Per- 
haps you have never yet met with a Bishop. M He is known in the 
Church as 5". Basilius Magnus, which may be rendered St. Basil the 
Magnanimous. 

Of humility the pagan world had little or no conception. They 
had not so much as a name for it. Christianity had to coin a Greek 
name, and to elevate the meaning of the Latin word humilitas, which 
signified originally baseness, meanness. The nearest pagan equiva- 
lent for humility was a virtue which they named modesty, or good 
form: it consisted in not taking airs and making yourself offensive 
by swaggering in company. This overlooking of humility was due 
to the imperfection of pagan ideas about God. The gods of the 
ancient world gave poor examples of morality : they were not holy 
gods, but powerful beings who used their power to their own 
gratification. Walk before me and be perfect, as God said to 



MAGNANIMITY AND HUMILITY 81 

Abraham (Gen. xvii, i), would have sounded a strange precept 
given by a pagan deity to pagan ears. Consequently the pagan was 
little in the habit of contrasting his own moral weaknesses with the 
transcendent holiness of the Supreme Being. Many a pagan must 
have thought that in point of moral goodness Jupiter and Apollo 
were not his superiors: they were materially better off than their 
worshiper, not holier. In fact the pagans regarded their gods 
much as the poor nowadays regard the rich. Humility is not in- 
spired by an attitude of mind like that. j^The ground of humility 
is the utter inferiority of human nature to the divine, and 
man's dependence upon God for all that he has, even his 
very existence, i "Humility," says St. Thomas, "seems prin- 
cipally to imply subjection to God: humility principally regards the 
reverence whereby man is subject to God." Humility then is the 
proper posture for every created mind to assume in presence of its 
Creator. To say that man is created to pay to God reverence 
and obedience, is to say that man is created to be humble. The first 
of the beatitudes, blessed are the poor in spirit (Matt, v, 3), is a 
blessing on the humble. The poor in spirit, says St. John Chrysos- 
tom, are the humble and contrite of heart; and he quotes for this 
explanation Isaias xxvi, 2: Upon whom shall I look but upon him 
that is poor and contrite of spirit, and trembleth at my words? 
The fear of the Lord, so continually extolled in the Old Testament, 
is nothing else than humility. Of the sinner whose foot is the 
foot of pride, it is said: The fear of the Lord is not before his 
eyes (Ps. xxxv, 2, 12). 

Both humility and pride consist in habits of mind rather than in 
habits of external conduct. When it comes to outward behaviour, 
humility shows itself as obedience, pride as disobedience. Children 
in confession accuse themselves of "pride," meaning disobedience : 



82 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

therein these little ones are good theologians. Inculcating humil- 
ity St. Peter wrote : Be ye subject to every human creature for 
God's sake, whether to the king as excelling, or to governors as 
sent by him . . . fear God, honour the king (I Pet. ii, 13-17). 
How far men generally are from honoring authorities in Church 
and State for God's sake; how the fear of God is ceasing to be 
before the eyes of men, is patent to every observer. Such is the 
fruit of a godless education, which is truly an education in pride. 
Humility, as we have seen, was not on the list of pagan virtues. 
We are lapsing into paganism. It is more and more the way of the 
world to put man in the place of God. Where this substitution 
becomes complete, humility vanishes, and pride takes its place, 
pride and disobedience and anarchy. Such is the way of Antichrist, 
the man of sin, the wicked one, or more literally, the man of law- 
lessness, the lawless one, zvho is lifted up above all that is called 
God, so that he sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself as if 
he were God (II Thess. ii, 3, 4, 8). /jWhen God is put out of His 
place as governor of human society, and man will hear but of man 
alone, when reverence is perished off the earth, and fear of super- 
human powers, and awe of a world to come, the ground is prepared 
for socialism. Socialism will not be built four-square on the cardi- 
nal virtues ; it will not rest on Christ the Rock, but on the sand of 
incoherent speeches, and violence, and blasphemy. When Socialism 
is set up we may look for the rain and the Hoods, and the winds, 
and the great fall (Matt, vii, 26, 27). 

Whatever man be in comparison with his fellowman, he is little 
enough compared with God. This is motive for humility even for 
the highest and holiest of creatures. We sinners on earth have the 
further motive of our sins, and not only our sins, but what is 
almost more humiliating, our proneness to sin; and besides our 



MAGNANIMITY AND HUMILITY 83 

sinfulness, our ignorance. We know so little, we can know so little, 
that school after school of philosophers have fallen into the plausible 
error of maintaining that the human mind has no hold whatever on 
truth as it really is, but wanders in an enchanted maze which it has 
constructed for itself. The Church has never countenanced that 
sceptical, idealist philosophy. Indeed the transition is easy from 
ignorance to omniscience. The position that man knows nothing 
of reality may be amplified into this, that there is no reality any- 
where outside and away from human thought: then man's thought 
constitutes all that can be called reality, and man is as God, author 
of all, knowing all. The orthodox view, which is also the view 
taken by ordinary mankind, is that man does know a little truth, 
touching the world and its Creator; but for one thing that man 
knows there are a thousand things beyond his conjecture, known 
only to God, who knows all. Man, then, is very ignorant before 
God, in his present condition. The reward promised to his fidelity 
is the sight of God, which will be the dispelling of his ignorance, so 
far as ignorance can be dispelled from a finite mind. To aid man to 
this goal, God has been pleased to reveal to him sundry truths, 
some of which he could not have found out for himself at all while 
others he might have found, but could not have held with firm cer- 
tainty. These are the truths of the Christian revelation, embodied 
in the Creed. So learning them, man is, as our Saviour says, quot- 
ing Isaias, taught of God (John vi, 45; Isai. xiv, 13). He is as a 
child in God's school, God's school being the Church. The first 
requisite in a pupil is docility. God expects man to lend a docile 
ear to His teaching as given in the Church. Unless ye become as 
little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Who- 
soever shall humble himself as this child, he is the greater in the 
kingdom of heaven (Matt, xviii, 3, 4). This virtue whereby we 



g 4 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

receive the teaching of God in the Church is called faith. The 
faith of an intellectual man is a great abasement of his understand- 
ing before God, a great act of humility, in these days especially, 
when science is widening and criticism is so keen. Yet after all it 
is not science, not criticism, that makes the difficulty of faith, but 
the neglect of prayer. Prayer is essentially an act of reverence to 
God, and therefore of humility: it is a profession of our total de- 
pendence on Him, a confession of our own insufficiency and con- 
sequent need of Him: it is usually a confession of our sins besides 
and an imploring of His pardon. Humility begets humility. The 
humility of prayer engenders and fosters the humility of faith. If 
a learned man loses his faith, it is not because of his learning as 
such, but because much study has left him prayerless. At the same 
time it must be confessed that study and mental acumen, as they 
remove many difficulties against faith — the shallow cavillings of 
the half-educated — so they raise other difficulties. As you mount 
the hill you see other hills, which from the valley you do not see. 
Therefore, as the high-strung, nervous organism needs much 
prayer to withstand sensual temptation, so |he highly trained in- 
tellect needs prayer and Sacraments in abundance to surmount what 
God detests even beyond sensuality, namely, intellectual pride. 
Through such pride fell Lucifer. The intellect that comes nearest 
the angels must have a care that it, too, imitate not the sin of the 
angels. A keen inquirer must ever remember that, unlike science, 
faith is no intuition of genius, no product of elaborate reasoning, 
but is ultimately an obedience to the voice of God speaking in the 
heart, which voice must be heard in all humility. The ear of the 
proud is deaf to that still, small voice. To the Pharisees, because 
of their pride, Our Saviour said : Ye shall seek me and not find me, 
and where I go ye can not come (John vii, 34). 



MAGNANIMITY AND HUMILITY 85 

Finally, I must repeat, humility, obedience, faith are ever high- 
minded and noble hearted, because they bring one in touch with God. 
The author and finisher of our faith, who endured the Cross and 
despised the shame, and now sitteth at the right hand of the throne of 
God (Heb. xii, 2), He who was meek and humble of heart (Matt, xi, 
29), is likewise the typical magnanimous man. 



86 THE CARDIXAL VIRTUES 



XII. THE INFUSED VIRTUES 

By nature we have capacities and predispositions towards virtue, 
which capacities and predispositions are by practice converted into 
habits ; these habits are the "acquired virtues." Such "acquired vir- 
tues" have been our theme hitherto. Now we must note two further 
points about them. First, in many men they are very ill acquired. 
The habit of sobriety, of veracity, of honesty, of fortitude, in many 
a subject is a crude, ill-baked thing; a little temptation breaks 
through it, and your teetotaler is taken up for drunkenness, your 
honest cashier is in prison for embezzlement. Human nature on 
the whole sadly needs to have its virtues reinforced. \JThe "infused 
virtues," as we shall see, are a reinforcement to the "acquired." 
Secondly, no amount of virtue acquired by mere effort of nature will 
ever take a man to heaven, or win for him any reward there. Heaven 
means the vision of God, and that vision is simply out of range of 
all creatures' unaided strivings. The vision of God is not due either 
to the dignity or to the natural merits of any creature that God can 
possibly create, let alone man. It is a pure grace and gratuitous 
favour done to any creature who attains it. Xone but God Himself 
has a connatural right to see God. As the end to be attained is a 
grace, so the means to the attainment must consist of graces also. 
Such graces are the "infused virtues." No infused virtues, no - 
heavenN 

The infused virtues, of which I am about to treat, are faith, hope, 
and charity. Theologians complicate the matter by additions too 
subtle to be gone into here, and not very profitable for practice. 
These three virtues are infused in Baptism. Saying that, I do not 
mean to say that they can exist only in the baptized, but Baptism is 



THE INFUSED VIRTUES 87 

the ordinary means of their infusion. Baptism, then, puts into the 
soul a power to believe in the word of God revealing, a power to 
hope in the promise of God proffering to man the vision of Himself 
in heaven, and a power to love God above all things as a child loves 
its father, for in Baptism we are made adopted children of God and 
heirs of heaven, neither of which things are we by nature, or merely 
by being men. It will be seen that an infused virtue is not so much 
a habit as a power. The three infused virtues bestowed in Baptism 
are as three new faculties. Man is not born with the faculty of mak- 
ing his way to heaven. It is given him when he is baptized. 

These new faculties, — faculties of what St. Paul (Eph. iv, 24) calls 
the new man, created in Baptism, — like other faculties, need exercise, 
else they perish of atrophy. The baptized child is disposed to be- 
lieve, but he knows not what to believe until he learns his Catechism. 
He can not love an unknown God, nor hope for a heaven of which 
he has never been told. He has to be taught to make acts of faith, 
hope, and charity; and all his life long the oftener he elicits those 
acts with God's grace, the more robust do the infused virtues grow 
in him. By utter neglect of such acts he may become, not entirely, 
but in many respects, as though he had no infused virtues, as though 
he ha.d never been baptized, he may become as the heathen and the 
publican (Matt, xviii, 17). 

LYoung Christians generally, as might be expected, and not a few 
of longer standing, are strong in "infused virtues," but very weak in 
the "acquired virtues." They believe and hope abundantly, but as 
they too rarely exercise the acts, so neither have they acquired the 
habits of truthfulness, abstinence, sobriety, meekness, justice, obedi- 
ence. This is no situation to acquiesce in. To acquiesce in it were to 
fall into the heresy called Antinomianism, which means faith without 
works. 



88 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

The Christian, being bound to keep the Commandments, is bound 
in many various ways and recurring occasions to be just, temperate, 
brave and prudent. Thus, if he is faithful to his obligations, he forms 
in himself, whether he think of it or not, the habits of the cardinal 
virtues. A child may be excused for not possessing those virtues ; 
he has not yet had time to form the habits./! But the absence of the 
said virtues in a grown man, who has truly come to man's estate, 
having a man's knowledge and a man's appreciation of the law, 
argues in him a culpable neglect of acts which in many contingencies 
must have been incumbent upon him as duties. Neither the "infused 
virtues" should exist in a grown man without the "acquired vir- 
tues," nor the "acquired" virtues without the "infused" ; neither faith 
without works, nor works without faith.J We notice in the epistles of 
SS. Paul, Peter and John, traces of a disposition on the part of some 
early Christians to scorn the "acquired virtues" in the exuberance of 
the felt graces of their Baptism. This mistaken neglect of the 
natural order the Apostles were at pains to correct. (See Romans 
xiii, 1-8; I Cor. v, 1-6, 9, 10; x, 1-12; Gal. v, 13-21 ; I Pet ii, 13-18; 
I John ii, 3-6.) This also seems to be the main scope of the epistle of 
St. James. The Christian is a man sublimated. He ceases not to 
be a man and should have the virtues of a man. Grace does not 
abolish ethics. The office of "infused virtues" is to foster and take 
command of "acquired virtues," and raise their acts to a higher 
order. 

When to the proper motive of an "acquired virtue" there is super- 
added the motive of an "infused virtue," the act thence resulting is 
said to be elicited by the acquired, or natural, virtue, and commanded 
by the supernatural, or infused virtueJ As a rule, in a man leading 
a Christian life, all the acts elicited by his acquired virtues are com- 
manded by his infused virtues. Thus if he prays, which is an act of 



THE INFUSED VIRTUES 89 

religion, he is led to pray by motives of faith and hope in Christ. 
Martyrdom, elicited by fortitude, is commanded by charity. It is 
only by being commanded, at least habitually, by charity that the 
virtuous acts of man become meritorious of heaven. The "acquired 
virtues," as such, qualify for well-being on earth. The "infused 
virtues," and the "acquired" as commanded by the "infused," qualify 
for happiness in heaven. Further, as we have seen, the "infused" 
virtues fortify the "acquired." 

The "infused virtues" are the care of the Church; the "acquired 
virtues" are the care, although not the exclusive care, of the State, as 
such. I say as such, because a Christian State in concert with the 
Church will have some concern about the infused virtues. The 
State's direct care of virtue is limited to "overt acts" of the same. An 
"overt act" is defined "an act which externally manifests the dis- 
position of the mind." Virtues are as oil to the machinery of gov- 
ernment. In so far as they are needed as an aid to government and 
social order, they are called "civil virtues." It must be confessed 
that the necessary standard of civil virtue is not very high. A man 
may be a good citizen, yet not a good man, still less a good Catholic. 
On the other hand, no State can get on without a certain measure of 
goodness and virtue among its people. Every government must 
trust some of its subjects; the ruler can not constrain everybody, 
nor oversee every official's doings, there must be some fortitude, 
some justice, some temperance and self-restraint away from the eye 
of the policeman. And besides, who shall police the police ? Who 
shall answer for the fidelity of the soldiers ? A State may become so 
morally rotten as scarcely to hold together as a State : then it perishes 
under the first strong arm raised against it either from without or 
from within. Both Church and State have a common interest in 
making the citizens virtuous up to a certain point. Beyond that 



9 o THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

point the Church will wish to raise them to a still higher virtue; 
but the State, if it be not a Christian State, is apt to hang 
back, to consider the Church importunate, meddlesome, punctilious 
and scrupulous, and even actually to thwart its efforts. There- 
upon Church and State fall out. We see this in the matter of 
marriage laws, and above all in the education question. The State 
subsidized school refuses to have Christian Catholic morality and 
piety inculcated within its walls. It opens its doors only to "Biblical 
morality," whatever that may mean, or "simple ethics." 

Without insisting on the divine mission of the Church, which the 
heathen statesman will not admit, this practical consideration may be 
advanced to move even a heathen. Whatever ideal of conduct you put 
up, you may make up your mind that the multitude will fall short of 
it in practice. [You must propose a high ideal to get the mass of 
mankind to be even moderately virtuous, j Schoolmasters forget this, 
who will not have their charge made "too pious." Preachers forget 
it, who are fond of expatiating on the topic how little after all 
Christ requires of a layman in the world, — albeit surely the layman 
must be Christ's disciple, and Christ's condition of discipleship is to 
renounce all things (Luke xiv, 33). Now the Church's ideal of 
virtue is a high ideal. The State's ideal of virtue is a low one. 
Train men to the Christian standard, and you may reasonably expect 
them not to fall short of that human standard which must be attained 
for the decent well-being of civil society. He will stop far short of 
murder, who dreads violent hatred as a mortal sin for which he may 
lose his soul (Matt, v, 21-26). He will not commit adultery, who is 
taught to abhor a lustful glance (Matt, v, 27-30). He will not 
swear a false oath in court who boggles at an unnecessary one 
(Matt, v, 33-37). He who loves his enemy will not fail his friend, 
nor be an enemy of lawful government (Matt, v, 43-47). A man 



THE INFUSED VIRTUES 91 

who seriously aims at perfection will not be a bad citizen (Matt, v, 
48). But preach an easy and lax morality, just sufficient for State 
purposes, and what sort of practice can you expect? That which 
you get in sundry godless schools, where the State, thinking to 
subsidize education, is really subsidizing crime, and the coming 
socialism. 

Lit remains to consider the motives of virtue.] Why be virtuous at 
all? [Like any other skill, virtue is acquired by training and self- 
denials It is far easier to be vicious ; and though vice itself be not 
pleasant, inasmuch as it makes a slave of a man, anyhow the acts 
that lead to vice are alluring enough. \The Aristotelian motive for 
any virtuous act is its being the kalon, the right thing.; Of this motive 
I desire to speak with all respect. I admit its potency. Hundreds 
of heroic deeds have been done with scarce any other motive than 
this, that it was the right thing to do. "Duty," or "the right thing," 
has exercised a marvelous sway over human hearts. It has been 
obeyed without its claims being questioned, or its title verified. Still, 
quite as often, it is flouted and disobeyed. Sceptics have analyzed 
it, and some have found to their own satisfaction that duty is only 
pleasure in disguise ; whereupon many prefer pleasure undisguised. 
Any strengthening of the motive of virtue is of the highest value to 
mankind. Such strength is afforded by the infused virtues of faith 
and charity. They propose, not an abstract kalon, but a personal 
kalos, — One who is all beautiful, all lovable, all holy, because, being 
man, He is also God. LThe Christian aims at virtue for love of "the 
right thing," to be sure, but still more for love and imitation of the 
adorable person of his Saviour,] the living Head of that living Body 
of which every Christian is a member; by incorporation in which 
he has grace to do all works of virtue requisite for salvation, and 
better than Melchisedech, who lived under the ancient dispensation, 



92 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 

to be assimilated to the Son of God (Heb. vii, 3). Enthusiasm for 
a person is wanted to eke out the intellectual grasp of a principle. 
Men will do for persons what they will never do for principles. An 
impersonal principle, whatever its philosophical merits, too often 
leaves the heart cold. We want personal enthusiasm to meet a 
crisis, and principle to insure stability. To meet both these wants, the 
Catholic Church holds up in her one hand charity and the Sacra- 
ments, in her other faith and the Creed. The virtuous Christian is 
characterized alike by clear knowledge of and steady adherence to 
the principles of faith and reason, and by steady loyalty to the per- 
son of his Saviour. 

(The essential idea of virtue is that of firmness and steadiness. 
Virtue is the corrective of impulse. The man of mere impulse may 
do many good and generous deeds, still he is not a good man, for 
the proneness to do good has not been engrafted on to his nature. 
This important psychological fact, that we are more inclined to act 
in some given way for having acted in that way before, the fact 
that having often acted in a certain way we arrive to a habit which 
inclines so to act always, except under quite abnormal circum- 
stances, — this fact is the generator of the whole economy of virtues 
and vices. Of itself, in the right order of nature, it is a provision 
to steady our wills in good; incidentally, and by abuse, it may fix 
the will in evil. As habits form, man approaches to the condition 
of an angel, either of a good angel or of a devil. One act is said 
to make a fixed habit in an angel; many acts are needed to fix the 
more volatile will of man. Nor is the fixture ever quite perfect. 
You are never quite sure that the virtuous man will elicit his virtuous 
act every time that the occasion calls for it. His will always re- 
mains in some measure indeterminate and free, and his consequent 
action uncertain. Free will in man never passes away into charac- 



THE INFUSED VIRTUES 



93 



ter. Thus plexus of habits, which is called character, never becomes 
the sole and adequate determinant of human conduct. 

Some room is always left for effort and free choice. ,_J3ut un- 
doubtedly the growth of virtues and vices does abridge the freedom 
of the will for better or for worse. It anticipates in some measure 
that fixed determination of the will to good, which obtains in the 
blessed in heaven ; or to evil, in the case of the lost. Nor is it any 
loss of perfection, — nay, it is a higher freedom, — to have your will 
bent immovably upon good, so immovably that temptation, how- 
ever clamorous, offers you no real inducement to act upon it./ There 
are outrageous sins to which any decent man is never really tempted. 
He is above solicitation in that direction. That man would not be 
far above the level of a wild beast, who had to exert all the moral 
energy of his will, time after time, to restrain himself from cutting 
your throat. Growth in virtue gradually raises man above all de- 
liberate sins, almost as much as the common man is raised above 
murder. Indeliberate acts, "sins of surprise," as they are called, are 
an infirmity cleaving to man as long as he lives. They are not com- 
mitted on principle. They are triumphs snatched by impulse from 
principle when principle is caught napping. But for the avoidance 
even of great sins the Christian, however perfect, must never rely 
upon his own acquired virtues. He must watch and pray that he 
enter not into temptation (Matt, xxvi, 41). 



